Hello, I have recently obtained the Level 3 Occupational Health & Safety qualification with NEBOSH, and i'm new to IOSH. I am really looking for some advice- can anyone recommend the best sources of changes to law/legislation/regulations? I hope to be able to stay on top of any changes, as i don't want to miss anything or do any work to standards which have (or will soon become) outdated. Thanks! KR.

thanks, yeah i use it a lot, it's a really usefull source of information and advice/ACOPs etc etc...i'm just looking to broaden my horizons a little!

HSE do not make laws. Government make laws (Acts of Parliament )whilst Regulations are generally drafted by parliamentary draftsmen and approved by Parliament. Jon

John M Are you telling us that our elected representatives know understand or even care about the legislation that they are voting on? Every government department has a policy section, which explains to MPs, in words of one syllable, etc what laws need changing. This is what they vote on. The parliamentary draftsman’s job is to take the stuff that has been given to MP’s and rewrite it so that it can make sense in court. But the basic policy comes from the civil servants. Of course if the government gets a bee in its bonnet about something then the civil servants will draft anything that is asked of them eg Fees for HSE visits.

Now children put the toys away and stop fighting over who owns them! The only body who can make laws and regulations is Parliament and it is nothing to do with thier understanding of such things, don't start to think that MPs don't know the law, most of them have a sound background in legal matters. The HSE do get involve, of couirse they do they give advise and help the drafting process, using its own experts to develop them, but they only make suggestions and recommendations they don't make law. To give some advise on how to keep up to date, Barbour have a very good system that for a fee paid annually they will update the loose leaf publication every year for you so you don't need to keep that much actual legislation although it is often good practice to do this from the HSE website or down ooad the new or revised legislation direct from the Gov website.

For Kralph, I'd concur with Betta - the HSE / Netregs bulletins will keep you abreast of any changes, you can then decide what's relevant to you / your sector and delve as deep as you need to. Jay, you raise an interesting point. Here we are in with a government telling us we have burdensome regulations and too much red tape. You wouldn't by any chance be suggesting that if they actually looked at and debated what they were passing (instead on filing their expense claims) we might have found some of that 'burden' avoided in the first place? (Don't even mention the time and money now being wasted debating, reviewing and telling the public how the HS sector has got it all wrong!).

Back on to the original post I am not convinced that paid for sites are much use. We used to subscribe to Barbour so that we could save on space and avoid having to keep copies of all of the regs, ACoPs etc. Now these are available on the HSE website to down load for free I can’t see the point of Barbour or Cromer. Other things that we could get were British and other standards but the subscription they charged was in my opinion excessive for the occasional download. As for news, HSE have to consult before the draft new regulations (which is made into law as a Statutory Instrument) There is this idea put about that the HSE like to sneak out regs without people knowing and that people have to be informed or they will get caught out. This does not happen. The new regs go through a long process which usually starts with a piece of European legislation (a directive or regulation) which involves loads of consultation steps. Them they draft UK secondary legislation followed by more UK consultation and a regulatory impact assessment. On then do they actually put up the regs appear either in April or October. Rather than sneaking out legislation the main issue is legislation which we are expecting to suddenly disappear into “consultation hell” for months or years with no clear idea when this was finally appear. For example, following the Pirbright Fiasco, the Callaghan report suggested that the responsibility for enforcing Animal Pathogens legislation (SAPO) should be moved to the HSE. A time table appeared for this programme, involving several stages, including amending the Health and Safety at Work Act ( using a regulatory reform order) and setting up two new regs( using two statutory instruments) to extend the powers of the HSE and to combine the bioagents bit of COSHH with SAPO and GMO regulations. This should have all be in place by October 2010, with a new ACOP. Nothing happened. I happen to meet someone from the HSE Policy unit and they said everything went on hold, while the new government decided to what they were going to do. They decided to proceed with this project but it would not be finished until April 2012 as they first need to deal with the Fees for visits regulations, which the new government regarded as a bigger priority. The thing the policy gonks are really interested in is Lord Young’s idea to consolidate ALL regulations into a single set of easy to understand rules complete with ACoP. That will be fascinating and will keep this forum busy for months This information is free