Hello everyone I have a friend who used to work for a international engineering company base in our town and after four and half years she had to leave that job. Apparently she was working with chemical solutions, solvents and inks. Since she had started her work, she started having lots of health problems (Migraine, Morning sickness. Eye, throat,nose and skin problems and finally ended with depression). She says there is a thermometer which it has been fixed on 16 Celsius, summer and winter. She was bullied because she was the only one who was complaining about the work condition,ppe and ventilation says she did not have any PPE what so ever. The unit was too close to high voltage electric pole as well. I have to say it is not just her who has got these problems. Some of the staff feel just headache and some feel fainting and so.. She was invited to HR on few occasions and was bullied to stop complaining.Just for your information, she is migrant worker. I have just finished my National general and for that reason I am short of experience. Could some one tell me if we should take this case to HSE? Let me thank you in advance for your time and replies

Yes, the worst that can happen is that the HSE decide not to take it further, but if you don't at least say, then how can things get better?

Thanks for your comments. About temperature I meant that even when it was 10 c it was showing 16. Personally I am not looking for anything out of this. I am a foreign national as well and in past 11 years I have witnessed violations of HS Rules and Regs from both (employers and employees) on so many occasions and this is why I have decide to work in this sector and try to put stop to this kind of practices. One company employees a well trained HS officer and spends millions to protect staff,members of public and environment and another one just violates. Are these same? No. This person have been subject to harassment, harsh working condition and exposed to Lots of harmful materials. I think we should promote these actions (exposing and reporting) as a HS practitioner. Could you please tell me are we to protect employees or multi million £ companies profits? Thanks again

pasa The HSE website contains useful information about making complaints about health & safety matters at http://www.hse.gov.uk/co...workplace-complaints.htm In the past HSE would accept complaints from anonymous people. However, the HSE website information states that nowadays the HSE does require complainants to give their names and contact details for various reasons. One reason is that in some cases, inspectors may wish to contact complainants for further information or to check details before they visit to investigate. However, HSE will not reveal such information to employers, etc unless complainants have agreed to HSE doing this. As other responders have already mentioned, there is no need for complainants to tell HSE which laws they think are being broken. Although making a complaint seems unlikely to benefit your friend, it could very well help other employees at the workplace if their health and/or safety continues to be put at risk by inadequate conditions. If the workplace has existed for some years, it is probably known already to HSE. However, depending on how many years it has existed and to what extent OS&H problems have been noted by inspectors in the past, it is possible that the workplace may have had few visits and little scrutiny from HSE. Also, if your friend still has problems with her health which she thinks were caused by poor conditions at the workplace, it's probably worth mentioning this fact to HSE even though she has left the workplace and therefore HSE cannot help her. HSE is understandably wary about untruthful complaints made for malicious reasons e.g. by persons who have been sacked for misconduct. Therefore, if it is known that others still at the workplace have health problems, this should certainly be included in the complaint information to help HSE gauge its validity and also to decide what priority should be given to an investigation.

Reference Graham's point, traditionally HSE Inspectors have been well-versed in how to not tell an occupier that they have received a complaint, e.g. by carrying out a diagnostic "routine" inspection and then homing in on the subject of the complaint. Now that HSE has announced that it will no longer do routine inspections of large sectors of industry etc, it will now be much more difficult to hide the fact that an Inspector is following up a complaint, where the complainant (often rightly) does not wish to identified.

Hi again. Thanks for your replies. Your information have lit the dark areas which I am sure will help both, me and my friend. I have to say since the day she talk about her experience in that place, all bed memories have come back and she was telling me she started to have sleep problem again. Well, my friends, yes this is happening in UK on daily bases. Few months back there was a program from panorama regarding workshops in Leicester which were making clothing for some big brands here in UK and it showed under what condition these cloths were made. Any way, all of you have been helpful and we will be fallowing the leads. If you need more info pm me. Pasa