It is a problem, and no matter how much you tell the guys 'this is for your own good, not anyone else, we want to make sure you go home safe to you families' it doesnt seem to matter at all. It is still very negative toward H&S out there. Stopping them from working the way they used to, or how they imagined it! H&S are seen in a bad light, always giving out about something, but then thats our job, spotting hazards and ensuring there is no injury. But I have found that with a lot of the guys involvement is a great method to get them on board, ask them questions, see how they would sort the problem, and praise them if the idea is used. But your right to not get involved this morning, as you would yet again have been the 'bad one'

One of the problems I have found is that some Managers see H&S as telling them how to do their job- and they always know best. I have recently had a conversation with a Manager regarding fork lifts and people. We have a picking area in the racking- all of the stock for that particular line is stocked above. So, when the pick location is empty the FLT has to come into that aisle- where all of the people are trying to pick- to lower the stack. My simple question was; "Can we put the stock in another aisle where people are not working, lower the pallet, and have it moved by manual pallet truck into the location?" You would have thought that I had asked him to boil his first born. H&S considerations had not been thought about. I also got the phrase "Well if you can do any better..." For far too long the Managers have been able to do things without real considerations to H&S, so now that they have to, they don't like it. "Stifling the business" Perhaps those plumbers see H&S as dictatorial and stifling? As you say- would they say the same if they have an oxygen mask on in 20 years time? Andy

I have an acquaintance who does general building work mostly as a sub-contractor. Whenever we meet he has a dig about stupid rules he comes across. Mostly I can explain them but some are OTT. The last time I saw him he was in plaster having used a plastic "milk" crate to stand on, it had broken and he had fallen off breaking some bones in his foot/ankle. It's an expensive way to learn not to be lazy and to use equipment provided even if it means you must go and get it from all of 20 yards away. When he has recovered I bet he still reverts to having a dig

Of course, and since it seems these two HAD been on a number of 'stupid' H&S courses of some sort or another, the negative attitude that you seek to lay at the feet of just about everyone else may in fact fall closer to home. Bad students having a poor outcome from any teaching generally point to poor quality teaching. Now, who is going to take responsibility for that? It's not quite as easy, and far less comfortable, that mud-slinging toward the newspapers, government ministers and society in general.

The likelihood is these plumbers are self employed and hate restrictions on their time and extra expense required in some cases.

Buzz , I know what you mean, I have grown up with "these" guys and we still get together every few weeks for a drink or 2 , We all grew up on site work , I am the only one to have moved over to another sector , I now actively avoid having conversations on the subject because it is almost futile trying , having said that I will be honest and say yes I was the same .But now even with all the knowledge that NEBOSH have thrown at me. It is difficult to appreciate now more than ever the utter contempt and I am not saying contempt lightly here for the "elf n safety" Also in these times of uncertainness as regards to were the next job is coming from it is so much easier to quantify against . It brings to mind "volenti non fit injuria" or risk willingly accepted ? But now more than ever economic necessity forces us to work .And therefore possibly the temptation to cut corners . J

Ask yourselves these questions: Do I practice what I preach - everytime I do DIY at home? Do I smoke - care about my own health? (reference the many advertisements) Do I drink excessively - as above? Do I exceed the speed limit - care about other peoples safety and the law? (reference the stupid driving lessons / test) Have I ever broken the law? Finally, am I, to a degree a hypocrite?

Steve, your response also applies to my previous offering!

I do agree with the points about bad H&S training and maybe the plumbers had a point. I sat in on an asbestos awareness course, that I had organised for our maintenance staff and managers, provided by a large national H&S provider (they were the “approved” training provider for the company I worked for). The course was exceptionally poor, ~1 hour quoting legislation, ~1 hour showing pretty pictures of rocks and about ~½ an hour showing pictures of ACM that could be encountered in any workplace. All the feedback from the course was negative and it completely turned the trainees off H&S training, a bit like the plumbers, and worse they did not come away from the course with a good awareness of the risk/controls. It made me review why and how I buy in training courses and where possible I now always develop specific focused training that hopefully engages the audience, internally. I find it better at keeping people interested in H&S. I think sometimes it’s easy for companies to buy in training to get the certificate, to use to prove they have done enough without considering how effective the training will be at controlling the risk.

I assume this was a dig at my comments regarding the machine guarding question. Just to clarify - I didn't say you couldn't 'do it and PUWER says so so end of' I did say there is a recognised hierarchy of guarding given in Reg 11 of PUWER In that particular case, if you had concluded that guarding was not 'practicable' and that relying on instruction and training was the only option left, then that is acceptable by Reg 11 of PUWER. Just if it goes wrong, you would have to justify your risk assessment conclusions as to why guarding was removed / no practicable. Loads of case law to back up any prosecutions etc. There are relatively few situations now where h&S clearly says 'NO' - which is one of the good points of current h&s law and risk assessment. On the negative side it can be quite subjective to interpret safety law and best practice. Part of promoting good h&S practice in my view is not to stone wall and simply say 'NO' when somebody has a problem. It is the h&s consultants role to advise on best practice and how to get the job done, yet stay legal.

It is called the health and safety at work etc act and not the health and safety at home in my own time act. You are looking at health as a whole and not in relation to safety. Smoking is a choice and therefore has little bearing it is not brought on by a work activity, as it would be by creating dust etc. I do exceed the speed limit at times, but it is risk assessed, I look at the speed of other traffic, time of day area I am in etc. I have never broken the law unless you class the above.

Invictus - Your risk based approach to speeding is comical. Would you tell the copper you haven't broken the law when caught speeding? So you don't always comply with criminal law then, and what is expected of you as a trained / licensed driver - that was the point!

My goodness, since my comment above there seems to be some clear, almost unanimous, agreement. Strange. I had expected a largely vitriolic response. I am pleasantly surprised, and will certainly mark the calendar with a bright red circle round today's date! Comments about compliance at work - is that on paper or in practice? - compared with wider deviation from standards defined in law is particularly interesting. Do any of us practice what we preach? For those responsible for teaching or supervision of others that is a crucially important challenge, since even the slightest deviation undoes even the best teaching as students loose faith in the teacher/supervisor and ignore completely the message and any rules that may be imposed. Until those who 'teach', at whatever level, and those who supervise work more closely with each other, and are seen always to practice what they preach, there is unlikely to be any real improvement and criticism will abound.

I'm going to pitch in on behalf of the plumbers, and say there is some bad health and safety out there, too much bad health and safety, with safety 'amateurs' making a meal out of it rather than being pragmatic and helpful, and it switches otherwise good workers against us. Bad training is part of the picture, but let me use an example from a previous role. A lead-tradesperson comes from site (I'm new) to see me saying he (well, the client) needs a risk assessment and a 'method statement' to do a job. He is experienced and knowledgable. The standard risk assessment I pull out of the draw is five pages long, with a matrix, colours and plenty of boxes to fill in. The method statement template is also confusing and over the top, the previous safety manager loved his over-complex safety forms, presumably this over-complication made him feel needed. I say this as this chap nearly burst into tears on seeing the forms, again, this level of paperwork is daunting, and frankly beyond him. He would spend maybe a couple of hours on the paperwork. This minor-works job was less than a day, cutting some metal tubes, filling them with ballast/concrete, set-up for use as bollards. He is the 'two-plumbers' the previous H&S manager would then have sent on a bad 'risk-assessment' course - no wonder some workers dont respect H&S! Just so you know - In this case I sat him down, told him to forget the forms and we did it 'old-skool', took ten minutes simply writing down on a side or two of paper the basics he really needed to think about, the client was ok with it too.

Buzz I've got 5 minutes before dinner...so further to my earlier response I feel obliged to comment that many of those working at the 'coal face' see health and safety as a load of nonsense for a number of good reasons. There is far too much of it in some quarters which is not proportionate to the risks, sometimes it prohibits the work getting unnecessarily and sometimes it is pathetic! The Lofstedt Report highlighted a number of over zealous practices, but there are many more which this industry needs to address - compulsory PPE which is often OTT or unsuitable for the taks, risk assessments for all and sundry, reams of fairly useless and often generic documents which operatives 'need' to complete. I could go on, however it is not surprising that many people see h&s as a self-serving load of twaddle. We need to get our house in order if we are to win back the respect this industry deserves.

I agree Ray, more steps should be taken to improve H&S practice. The register of consultants may help a bit - I don't know how rigorous it is as I am not a consultant and so have not looked into it. If there was a register of trainers as well that would be good. I think to be allowed to deliver H&S training, you should have suitable training qualifications and proof of competence in the particular topic you are training on. Anyone can go out there and deliver a manual handling course for example. So may be there should be a register of trainers - or may be that's in the consultants register? I don't know - perhaps someone can elaborate. Plus use of plain English and well-designed guidance and forms is a must, So, some sort of qualification on administration that covers plain English, presentation and use of IT. But putting all this aside, and coming back to the two angry plumbers, there is a whole spectrum of plumbers out there from rogue traders to fully qualified and highly recommended gas fitters and engineers. However, this does not lead me to the conclusion that all pumbers are evil stupid nazi idiots trying to take over our lives. Whereas that was their perception about H&S.

Buzz - just thinking - on the basis that people dont actually want to hurt themselves, it would be an interesting root cause analysis, or 'why' tree review to get to the bottom of what the plumbers were saying.......

'I always bear in mind that if a serious occupational accident did occur and I was called as a witness my professional credentials would be brought into question, not something I'd relish the thought of.' Surely, if you were only a witness there would be little to fear. If you were an 'expert' witness then there may be some cause for concern.

Maybe, but is it worth taking the risk? At some point 'we' would probably make a statement "I could see it was unsafe", where the next question asked would be something like "why did you consider it to be unsafe?/what qualifies you to make that assessment?"... ..."because I'm a 'safety professional'"... Needless to say but that wouldn't be a great position to be in, especially if the accident had resulted in life changing injury or worse. Equally it wouldn't sit well with me from a moral perspective either.

Dear All Some useful discussion here and a subject that is likely to concern us all. While there are serious issues about the media, Government policy on health and safety, Mr Cameron's statements etc there are underlying problems that those working in health and safety need to sort out. There is not one issue and several have been addressed in previous posts. So Buzz what could be done to change the plumber's approach? Maybe a discussion to be had in the Plumbers World shop about plumbing first. In #2 Lawlee makes the point about involving people. I'll take this one forward. Many workers have h&s thrust upon them through cheap repetitive training courses, instructions without explanation, told what PPE to wear and have their negative experience reinforced by crackerjack 'elf an' safety' stories. This tends to reflect how workers' status is perceived within organisations. It is no accident that on virtually all the organisational triangle charts I have seen, workers are at the bottom. They get h&s done to them. If the question is put to those plumbers - or others - in a comfortable environment (including pubs) what do they think about h&s, then out it comes. I have been doing this exercise on and off for over 30 years now. It gives them the opportunity to identify general or specific problems to which solutions can be teased out of them. Not the 'expert' trying to impress them with their knowledge of h&s but the specialist trying to facilitate workers, supervisors and managers into seeking solutions they will support and implement. People support what they help create. All too often in organisations, workers are at the end of a system that does not engage with them - it simply tells them what to do. So the plumbers could be asked what they do. What are the problems they face in their work? What gets in the road of them doing their job? What do they most like about what they do? By discussing their work and how they view things first, it gives the opportunity to have some glimpse as to how the world looks to them. Most of the people I have met at work are more than happy to talk about their jobs. One way of assisting in changing the negative approach is to start with the jobs people are doing and find out about that first. Then tailor health and safety solutions - with their input - and make any successes their successes. So if they have been consulted and agreed - for example - a PPE policy they are more likely to wear PPE when the policy is implemented. As an aside in virtually every face-to-face discussion I've had with anybody through work, keeping people safe and healthy has never been an issue - it has nearly always been accepted as a 'given'. Useless paperwork, boring training, impractical solutions, and lots of other issues, can raise tempers and are problematic. It is certainly perplexing as to how we have collectively managed to turn so much acceptance of the need for good h&s standards into so much vitriol. So the ground is ours to recover - and it seems to me that the organisational triangle needs to be turned upside down. Worker involvement should be at the heart of an organisation's business strategy, not as a side line. Some organisations have done this and success resulted. Not enough, though, have even tried. I have used Buzz's plumbers following the example he gave. I would stress that I have nothing against plumbers and indeed some of my friends are plumbers and they give an extremely valuable service to the community and business - especially my next door neighbour. Cheers. Nigel