Flysafe, I am not sure whether such a situation would occur. Surely the enforcement agency would take a prosecution on the basis that at location/site A there had been a breach of regs/legislation. They would not worry whether there was a system in place to prevent that breach at other premises within the group e.g. site B. And of course they may not even know. And I guess if employer tried to argue that there was a system in place the question to them would be along the lines "Well, that is so well and good but it didn't work here, on this occasion." Speaking from my posiiton at an (liability) insurer securing consistent operation of H&S across all locations at such policyholders can be a challenge. Phil

Flysafe I cannot remember the exact case details but I was at an event some time ago where a case of this nature was discussed. It was relating to a company who banned the use of semi-automatic quick hitches on excavator buckets on one site but continued to use them at another site (where the accident occurred). I have put in a couple of links to further information that may help a little. http://www.hse.gov.uk/pr...i-ldn-euroearthworks.htm http://www.hse.gov.uk/co...fetytopics/safehitch.htm A

Was that the Working Together / HSE Mock Trial in Northampton? Defendant was the fictitious Wendy House Ltd I think. An interesting event.

flysafe - don't know if this helps but - we were a newly merged organisation comprising of three former organisations covering some 170 different premises. We had an HSE inspection who were looking at how H&S was managed across the organisation and arising from that we were tasked with ensuring that all H&S management was "organisation wide". This included risk assessments, policies, procedures safe methods of working and so on. All these things were already in place in the 3 former organisations but they were not "common" ie readily transferable to anywhere in the larger new organisation. This tasking came in the form of an Improvement Notice and we basically had 6 months to get it all sorted.

Once again thanks for contributions. bilbo that's exactly the type of thing I was after I can use that. RayRapp - Thanks for your reply, I am very aware of all that, I may stress corporate manslaughter a bit more though. What I am after is examples of where a business has not managed H and S at all sites equally and this has been used as part of the prosecution argument to show that not all that is reasonably practicable has been done. Thanks again to all contributers.

Although not law HSG 65 is accepted as a suitable way of managing H and S to comply with the law so I would imagine an inspector can refer to HSG 65 in an improvment notice if a business does not have POPMAR in place across its whole business. Maybe others have more knowledge of this and can cotribute.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/leadership/index.htm May be of interest - you may find some of the arguments there relevant to your case.

You can't be prosecuted for having one standard on one site and not another. There's no law that says you have to have consistency. You can only be prosecuted for what is wrong at any particular site. The fact that another site managed to achieve a better standard may be an aggravating factor in any court case (ie they knew what the standard was and were able to achieve it elsewhere) but that would depend on whether each site was independant.

This is my first post on any discussion although I have been reading them for several months now. I will try not to put the cat amongst the pidgeons too much but I do feel the need to chip into this interesting thread. I have pretty firm views on legal requirements, even for an HSE Inspector, and it is really the debate around why a notice might have been served in this instance which I think I can contribute to. Hopefully, it might also assist Flysafe in your conversations with the newly installed senior management. Clairel is correct in stating that there is no legal instrument which says that an employer must manage every site in the same way but by the same token an employer will have to demonstrate that in complying with Regulation 5(1) of the Management regs they 'give effect to such arrangements ..... of the preventive and protective measures.' This applies to all of their employees across all of their sites (at least in the UK). It has been my experience that all sites will have their own range of hazards which obviously need to be controlled on a site specific basis due to any number of variables too large to list here but the ACOP for Reg 5 strongly draws any dutyholder towards some form of central oversight, if not control, of risk reduction measures as part of an effective safety management system. Interestingly, (to me at least!) this is an area where I have served an Improvement Notice on a multi-site employer and been taken to tribunal on the matter. Often safety hazards are the most straightforward to manage and it is often feasible to allow site specific measures to develop, although my first reaction to this would be that the safety management system runs the risk of becoming rather too complex. In terms of managing health risks, I struggle to see how a multi-site employer would be able to demonstrate that employees at all sites are protected and monitored, if that was necessary, without having some form of centralised policies and/or system. In these circumstances an Inspector will start to look at the actual hazards faced by employees and the measures put in place to control the risks. As soon as an Inspector has evidence that employees are at significant risk then they are duty-bound to act. I know that I am a little biased (we all are one way or another) and I know nothing of the notice mentioned earlier in the thread but it should be inconceivable that a notice would be issued without sufficient evidence of risk to people. In the case of my own defence of this appealled Notice, following three days of hearings the tribunal found strongly in favour of the HSE position, because there was evidence that inconsistent controls at the different sites led to differing levels of protection within the organisation and staff at a number of those sites were exposed to health risks which were not adequately managed.