The flyer that came with this month's SHP "Health and Safety at Work Brief" caught my eye, as we don't have any reference books to use at work (haven’t needed to thus far with the wealth of information available online). However when responding to enforcement officers (I work for a large retailer, so we get a lot of routine inspections) it would be nice to be able to quote case law etc. to further support our arguments as to why we do things the way we do etc. So I've began looking for a reference book to get for the department, are there any recommendations? Has anyone used the Health and Safety at Work Brief? (there seems to be a lot to choose from, Tolleys being another alternative?). The combination of commentary on various H&S topics with the addition of case law references is the biggest selling point, as we don't need legislation regurgitated as that's clearly readily available. Reccomendations welcome. Jake

Jake, An excellent reference book is "Safety at Work" by Ridley and Channing. It is published by Butterworth Heinemann. I think that it is now on to its seventh edition. It used to be recommended for studying the NEBOSH Diploma some years ago. Regards PH2

Thanks for the response so far. I do currently use a variety of online sources (most of which have been mentioned, although I havn't really looked at union website out of fear of second hand / politicised data??). I'm hoping that a reference book would: - Save time in research if I need to draft a quick memo / letter about a specific topic and want references to back my argument up and the fact that - Provide commentry etc. on case law and on its applciation to the topic - Provide case law that I might otherwise not be able to find. Any comparions between the book in my original thread and tolleys or just a rating of tolleys would be very useful, these seem to be the more popular (and upto date books) ("Safety at Work" has good reviews but is a little old now?)

Jake, the old addage of "dont knock it until you have tried it!" comes to mind, any source of information is worth a look, you can make your own mind up as to its value to you! After all I thought that the common aim of Health and Safety is that we all get to go home :o)