Hi All,

I hope everyone is well, i am new to but would like to get some advise in terms of how i would conduct a risk assessment on normal household furniture e.g. using a 5 door wardrobe, sliding door wardrobe, coffee tables, dining tables, chairs, nested coffee tables, sofas, tv units etc...

Need to know what injuries can be sustained the location of the injury the severity, probability and any risk mitigating action. 

This would be a great help as i am trying to improve how i operate my furniture store. 

I appologise if i have posted in the wrong thread. 

Regards, 

Ali

Also essential to consider stability.

https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/risk-assessment/hugo-boss-fine-bicester-village

Can we have background to your question / yourself as appraising the use of normal house hold furniture etc. is not what risk assessment was generally designed for and using the process for such areas without real need is one of the things has given H&S a bad name

This is an old document (2006) but I think it will cover a lot of the things you should be considering regarding manual handling, access, loading etc. I'd maybe have a read through and use it as the starting point for what you need to consider?

http://www.hse.gov.uk/re...hsl_pdf/2006/hsl0687.pdf

Hi All,

Sorry for the late reply, I have been asked to do so by the local council, but to be honest from my IOSH training i didnt see the need, however they have asked me to create a risk assessment for each indivudual item. i ahve over 1000 items in stock and creating 1000 risk assessments is not only pointless but time consuming. 

I was hoping to find one that may already been created for household furniture so i can edit and adjust.

I believe what they want is a list of hazards or injuries that can occur whilst using the furniture... for exmaple when using a slidng door wardobe your finger can get stuck causing a slight pinching pain due to inproper use. 

Originally Posted by: grim72

This is an old document (2006) but I think it will cover a lot of the things you should be considering regarding manual handling, access, loading etc. I'd maybe have a read through and use it as the starting point for what you need to consider?

http://www.hse.gov.uk/re...hsl_pdf/2006/hsl0687.pdf

Thank you for this, I had read the document a few days ago, however what they are after is a risk assessment of the furniture not the actual protocal / risk factors involved in the warehousing / delivery of the goods. 

Originally Posted by: ASHAKERI

Hi All,

Sorry for the late reply, I have been asked to do so by the local council, but to be honest from my IOSH training i didnt see the need, however they have asked me to create a risk assessment for each indivudual item. i ahve over 1000 items in stock and creating 1000 risk assessments is not only pointless but time consuming. 

I was hoping to find one that may already been created for household furniture so i can edit and adjust.

I believe what they want is a list of hazards or injuries that can occur whilst using the furniture... for exmaple when using a slidng door wardobe your finger can get stuck causing a slight pinching pain due to inproper use. 

I am reading this correctly: the EHO want a separate risk assessment for each item of furniture. There should be a separate one for a wardrobe (a separate one for each make and model?)  How can they justify this? Is this an improvement notice or just a comment?

What benefit would be obtained from having a separate risk assessment for each piece of furniture as I said before you do not risk assess an  object but a process (selling furniture in a shop or loading it in and out of a van) . No wonder the local authority inspectors have a poor reputation if this is the sort of b***s they get upto!

Ashakeri

I think it's an Improvement Notice that probably needs an appeal and perhaps liaison with the HSE myth busters.

You would need to do a new assessment every time you got a different model of e.g. TV even if the risk profile hadn't changed.

I could see a justification for e.g. a general manual handling assessment, and one for assembling larger items of furniture, but I don't see the (low) risks of e.g. getting your finger caught as being any different whether the doors slide or open out.

If you were to do what the Environmental Health Officer appears to be asking for you would end up with a book of risk assessments that none of your workforce would take any notice of. In general "Less is More" when it comes to making sensible decisions as to how to control a range of risks, e.g. to prevent tall wardrobes toppling over whether in your warehouse, showroom, or when you assemble at a customer's location.

Ali

From what you describe, I agree with peter gotch and grim72 that the improvement notice needs to be challenged. Before going down the formal appeal route, it would be worth contacting whoever is head of environmental health to point out the notice's deficiencies and ask for it to be formally withdrawn. If this can be done, it would save time, effort and expense for you, your company and the local authority. If you have little or no experience of such matters, consider getting support from one or more people with such experience. 

The evidently nebulous requirements of the notice are worrying. If it was served by a new trainee environmental health officer (EHO), surely it would have been seen first by his/her line manager, hopefully an experienced EHO who ought to have queried and stopped it.

It might also be worth contacting other furniture stores in your area to find out if they have received similar notices from the same EHO or other EHOs from the same local authority - and, if so, what their responses were.

Graham B

(apologies to forum users generally about any problems with the font size and formatting of this response which was composed first on another document. When I pasted it to the draft message box the forum system introduced massive spaces between the paragraphs and also within sentences. These all needed time to correct and comprised just one example of how the recent changes to the forums have made it harder to use. Therefore, although I'm not saying a complete farewell to the forums, I have become considerably less inclined to post on it ! )

And contact the councils own internal [not Env Health] H&S team for their opinion/thoughts and support if possible [remembering that rate payers pay their wages] as this is the very type of thing that gets H&S a very bad name and as already said give us more detail

Ashakeri

You might want to point out to the Council that you've been advised to challenge this notice by two ex HSE Inspectors each with over 35 years experience as a health and safety professional.