Whilst I am supportive of the INTENTION of this HSE Alert, I am cynical about how it will result in enforcement in practice, especially as regards any welding fumes where there are not specific Workplace Exposure Limits in place.
To serve an Improvement Notice, an Inspector has to be of the opinion that there has been breach of legislation.
What opinion are they going to present as regards sporadic welding in the open air or in a relatively open workshop?
Presumably failure to ensure "adequate control" of exposure.
So, when it comes to an appeal against an Improvement Notice what evidence will HSE adduce to demonstrate that the Inspector was justified in coming to their opinion?
Are front line Inspectors going to be provided with the right air monitoring equipment + the facility to use these without endangering those carrying out welding or working in the vicinity?
Or are they going to rely on Specialist Occupational Hygiene Inspectors looking at some photos and statements setting out the time extent of welding and environmental conditions at EACH location covered by each notice?
This is all heavily dependent on having enough front line Inspectors - far fewer than there used to be PLUS enough Occupational Hygiene specialists - there were never enough of these, even before HSE pushed health issues up its agenda.
Decades ago a Principal Inspector instilled me with the principle that if, as an Inspector, you were going to push the boundaries of what legislation required, you should do it via Prosecution, NOT notice, where the potential costs of litigation following successful appeal against a notice, as regards all the consequential losses resulting from the issue of a notice could be very considerable.
To those who say that as mild steel welding fume is now officially classified as carcinogenic and thence there is no safe limit, this doesn't wash on the "adequate control" bit of the opinion as we have WELs for numerous carcinogens - thence the "reasonably practicable" part of the legislative requirement is always going to come into the argument in a Tribunal considering an appeal against a notice, or in the Court considering a prosecution.
The legislation may put the onus on the defendant to prove somethings are not reasonably practicable, but there comes a point where HSE will need to try and rebut (at least in part) what the defence puts forward.
....and to date HSE's attempts to do health blitz campaigns have rather fallen apart, especially in construction where the subsequent press releases have confirmed that the number of Prohibition Notices for safety matters have vastly outnumbered the number of Improvement Notices for health risks.
I understand that an Inspector cannot ignore a blatantly dangerous scaffold when doing a health risk blitz, but if they insist on writing out a PN, rather than quietly agreeing with a contractor NOT to use that scaffold until it is safe and then concentrate on the IN for the health risks, the subsequent press release would be much more likely to send the intended message.
But in the era of Fee For Intervention, can we expect that quiet word instead of a PN?