Can anyone provide the answer please?

For many years the Organisation I work for have gone along with paper based compliance records for weekly, monthly, quarterly checks etc of fire extinguishers, exits, emergency lighting etc. etc which understandably has generated volumes of paper which need archiving for a ridiculous number of years!

Having explored various software programmes, apps etc I took the plunge and created a very extensive EXCEL spreadsheet, ( saved in the cloud... as well!), which can be widely shared around the organisation for view only, with myself and the maintenance team having editing rights. Using a RAG rating sytem, it is considerably more efficient, saves on valuable archiving space and lots of paper. It also looks good when everything is 'green'.

The question of a wet signature has been raised by a senior manager. My view is the system is recording what checks were undertaken, by who and when with entries  initialled at each point.  The arguement is 'well on paper there is a signature', my counter arguement is 'that proves that a piece of paper has been signed, it doesnt prove that an action has neccesarily been taken'.

Is there any legal requirement for a wet signature? Has anyone expereinced the same issue?

As always your thoughts and ideas will be gratefully received.

As far as the law is concerned signatures mean very little.  All the signature can prove is that someone was there to sign the paperwork. It does not prove that they listened to any training nor that they understood it.

In civil cases a signature can be useful if someone claims that for example that no training was provided after an accident and the defendant can produce a signed attendance list.

If you are really keen it is possible to create an electronic signature system; so for example, when you have created record the system will ask you to confirm that your identity using a PIN or password. This will be compared to a code stored on the system-which you have entered earlier when you logged onto to the system. If it matches then the code it is deemed to have been ‘signed off’. This process is common on document management packages such as Workbench.

As far as security goes it’s better than any ‘wet’ signature but cost money to set up and  makes filling and setting up records a bit clunky.