Which area of risk do you work in - is it retail. Have you tried www.spoodle.org.uk - gives good links. Are you absolutely certain you need 10-15 BS, would you read them all. Seems a lot to me. There are a lot of ACOPs out there which will give great guidance and most are free. In a previous job we had access to IHS - GOOD SERVICE - BUT SELDOM USED. SBH

Thanks for the initial replies. I work for a retailer and cover Health and Safety / Fire Safety / Food Safety / Trading Standards / Misc. for retail premises, warehousing / logistics and offices / facilities, with the potential for construction down the line. I am certain I'd need access to at least that number at least once, the catch is I clearly won't need regular access, but to gain access in the first place without a subscription I'd have to purchase the standards. I've a feeling it would be better economy to subscribe rather than purchase all the standards outright? Plus the trade / industry association paid-for guidance can be very useful too. Example, today I'm looking at our automatic customer doors, BS 7036 is the relevant standard, without this I cannot audit our contractors and our standard set up. We have many different items of equipment in our stores, and hundreds in our warehouses, and I'd like access when needed to all these standards so I can assure myself that what we're being told is correct and to check our own specification / procedures. Tomorrow there could be a number of topics that I'll need to look into, probably only once, but still need access to the information. Fully aware of the ACOPs and free guidance, fairly confident we have that area covered. If you look at HSG76 there are over 30 BSI published documents referenced.

We have IHS and BSOL (British Standards Online) and have trialed Barbour recently. I use the HSE website far more than any of the others, but (similar to Jake I think) I find it very useful to refer to Standards to clear up nagging doubts, or work out exactly how to do something. It's worth remembering how many ACoPs, Guidance Notes, etc contain mistakes in the way they quote or interpret Standards. I've not had much use for IHS (we have several modules, excluding the British Standards), in that the search facility frustrates me with outdated results and a messy interface. Some other people in our organisation use it, but in 3 years I've not needed it for anything I couldn't find elsewhere, sometimes quicker. BSOL is great, but expensive. The interface is fast and the search facility & filters work well. We recently changed from subscribing to several modules (which allows you unlimited download of Standards within them) to buying a facility to access 50 per year (unlimited times for each, and you can reset these annually if you like), saving a considerable amount. I got a call from Barbour 2 months ago and expected to say no, but I checked out their trial. The interface is light years ahead of IHS, and the proprietary material is of a pretty good standard - Jake, I see you say you don't need toolbox talks etc, so this might not matter to you, but even the 3-4 page briefing notes or Directors' briefings were handy for me to refer to on some subjects, and complement the HSE info well. I was impressed enough with Barbour to recommend we try it for a year. If it's a timesaver it'll be worth it, but we can decide after actually using it. Good luck

I have access to ihs, i didnt set it ip. I use it regularly, easy to look at 15 british standards, of course im not building a library