To all you other ISO responsible people. When you review if there have been any legislative changes and you come across one that has absolutely no effect on the undertaking of the business you are in, do you still list (record) you have reviewed a particular amendment or do you just ignore it? (ie so the original is applicable it is just an amendment that is not) If you ignore it how do you prove you have looked at it to the Auditor ? Yes you guessed it I had an external audit last week, and as I pulled him up on a legislative issue (correctly !), he then went to town on our register until he found something wrong. Sadly I had only reviewed what had changed since it was last supposedly done, trusting it had been done correctly by my predecessors ( and that anything that was significantly out would likely be picked up by the external auditor who has been coming to the company for years) - I will not make that mistake again. As any piece of legislation can be amended within another piece of legislation and some of this legislation has been around for years, this could all end up a right mess. He is insisting we list everything and I sort of take his point, but really. What are your views Chris

It was a piece of environmental legislation " The control of pollution (Oil Storage) (England) regulations". I pointed out we were in Wales. He obviously has to look at the register, but oddly he looked at it in January and had no problems. Who knows if he was being petty or not, he found what he found and made the comments he did. It just the register will end up like a spider web with all the references. It was things like I had listed COSHH 2002 as amended, but he felt I should have specifically noted 2004 amendments and what that meant for the company. Hence my question above.

As an 18001 sceptic I wonder what all this has to do with occupational safety and health at work.

David: What paperwork and systems do I need to join the 18001 sceptic society please? I want to join but I'm not sure I have all my ducks in a row yet. Does anyone do a pre-membership review to help me ensure I've got it right before the auditors come in? Does anyone have any templates I can plagiarise?

Chris-Why is a piece of English legislation even on your register if you are based in Wales and you have Welsh legislation that specifically covers oil storage. Your legislation register is supposed to list only that legislation pertinent to your business.

Hi Chris We pay for someone to trawl through all the legislation updates etc etc and advise us if any of the changes apply and what we need to do, saves me a lot of legwork. I get an email once a month with a list of the legislation that may or may not be applicable and brief note on what the review findings were. Initially there was a big body of work (before my time) looking at what we do and the rules and regs that apply. Now I just have to review as required and if there is anything applicable to us then action that. I have 18 months worth of reviews to show auditors (18001,14001). HTH Stu

Thanks all for taking the time to reply. Stuie - The company I work for will not pay for an outside company to do this, but I admit it is good for me to review as sometimes I may read something that is not relevant but sort of interesting to know. I will also admit I have a mountain of other work equally if not in some ways more important to do. Bob - I take your point that it is not about scoring points. We were actually doing a site tour when he spotted some oil ( in a drum inside a tin shed) and felt we were breaking the law. I simply said that those regulations did not apply in Wales - nothing nasty or points scoring in it. When we went and looked at the register it was also clear that it only applied in England and we had noted this fact. It was questionable if we had a problem even if the law did apply in Wales. My only other option would have been to allow him to give us a NC, by saying nothing. You are quite right he has every right (in fact duty) to go through our register. He did not find us actually doing anything wrong, other than we had listed some legislation and not specifically noted every time it had been amended ( so could not prove we had reviewed it specifically). The register had a review date on it, the Management review noted what legislative changes affected us, but the register did not list every amendment specifically if it did not apply. The same as it does not list other legislation that doesn't apply. This is why I asked the original question, do you record you have reviewed an amendment even when the details of the amendment do not affect you. As an auditor what is your view on this question. I have accepted that I now have no choice but to go back to the original piece of legislation and review every change / amendment to present day. I would have no way of closing the NC if I don't, It does mean that I will review again any amendments that my predecessors reviewed and decided were not applicable. Our register is 79 pages long ( about 50 pieces of legislation each with a page of information - containing relevance to company, where it applies, who is responsible and for what, where supplementary info can be obtained and references to other parts of the management system. So a reasonably robust document (I think). Again thanks all for taking time to read and reply. Chris

Thanks Hilary Yes you are right that a register is not explicitly required, however when you come to clause 4.5.2 which requires you to evaluate your compliance, how do you do that without a list ( register) and demonstrate it to an auditor. If you have any form of formal written audit against the legislative requirements, again you would write down the piece of legislation, and the amendments ( including the ones that do not apply to prove you have considered ?) Our NC was for "it could not be demonstrated that the impact of all updates had been reviewed" Even though the auditor noted that the review document had been updated with some legislation changes. I used to think that these standards were a good idea, I'm not as sure as I once was. I spent a good chunk of yesterday reviewing the legislation around air con units ( we have one with more than 3kg of refrigerant) and I'm now making reference to five pieces of legislation, not just one. Do I know any more today than I did yesterday on this subject - No I just wondered if others also listed out amendments that do not apply, just to prove they have reviewed it. Chris

Thanks Bob However nearly everyone has avoided or skirted round the actual question I asked Seems a shame as this thread has had quite a few views so there must be interested people out there other than me. Chris

Yes Chris that is part of the service we get; a simple line confirming has this change any impact on us, if so the legislation will be added to our register. Stu