Hi All, I would welcome people opinion on this. One of my sites has six 20,000 litre storage tanks for back up generators (very large acute site), and the manager insists that no risk assessment is needed. My immediate instinct is yes, but this is a very senior manager. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers HB

HB - From my experiences of fuel tanks I echo Bob S's advice. In addition, it may be worth checking the following: 1) If the tanks are accessible to unauthorised persons, either prevent such access or ensure that any drain valves for the tanks are kept locked so that they cannot be opened maliciously. (Years ago I visited a medium-sized engineering works where this had recently happened and the firm had been faced with the considerable cost of replacing the fuel and clearing up the fuel which had flooded their yard and hindered normal production work. The culprits were probably bored local teenagers. Even if they were identified and charged by the police, the firm would probably have got little or nothing in the way of compensation from them. Therefore, it seemed that the firm resigned itself to padlocking and chaining the drain valve handle in order to prevent any repeat of the circumstances.) 2) Another foreseeable scenario is that of a spillage arising through overfilling of a tank because of confusion about which tank or tanks need refilling with what volume of fuel. Therefore, it's worth ensuring that tanks have clear identification labels and also that their fill points are locked so that a member of site staff has to be present at the start of the fill process. (This is based on experience of incidents involving heating fuel tanks at several of my former employer's schools where tanker drivers arrived at the wrong locations and were able to start pumping into near full tanks. In one case, the overflow pipe was on the other side of the building to the fill point (sloppy design in my view) and resulted in a massive loss of fuel which got into and contaminated a local river and led to a successful conviction under environmental law.) You describe the tanks at your site as serving back up generators, so the frequency of refilling is likely to be low. Even so, if circumstances require the generators to be used, possible unfamiliarity with refilling arrangements might lead to errors by delivery drivers and perhaps site staff. 3) If the tanks have bund enclosures beneath them as they probably do, it would be worth instigating regular checks if they don't already exist to ensure that rubbish, especially combustible rubbish, doesn't get dumped and left in them e.g. by contractors. In your reference to a large acute site with back up generators I deduce you mean a sizeable hospital, so guess that you try to maintain high standards. However, with pressures on staffing and the fact that hospital sites tend to be open to the public including malicious visitors intent on theft or vandalism, it's important to maintain awareness and vigilance.

Although it doesn't strictly apply, a read of HSG176 may be worthwhile. There will also doubtless be Environmental reasons for risk assessment.

Environment Agency PPG2 and Control of Pollution (oil storage) apply - not strictly safety but you have to do an assessment - I would also suggest you should consider Fire aspects - not so much the tanks or contents but what might be nearby that could catch light. And assuming the tanks are close to each other - maintenance is probably fun as well! Regards