Rank: Forum user 
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We're a company with 42 staff, classed as a high risk as we're an OEM of electronic/mechanical products.
At this time of the year the main workshops and offices have skeleton staff and I always organise at least one emergency first aider & fire marshal on site for every working day when it's the seasonal holidays. However, with the spate of colds and illnesses floating around, some staff call in sick which could be one of those trained persons.
My question is, is it a legal requirement to have a first aider and/or fire marshal on site for every working day, when site runs at about 25%, or is it just a recommended figure? Finding it hard to find this confirmation. Would be good if someone could advise or point me in the right direction where it states the legal requirements.
Thanks,
Jim
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Rank: Super forum user
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JimD - it is a legal requirement to undertake a risk assessment to establish your needs. Having carried out that assessment if you determine that you do not need the same level of cover on reduced running days that should be supported by your assessment. Your assessment - your decision so to speak.
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Rank: Forum user
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Jim,
Why dont you consider putting all your personnel thry both courses, this can be carried out in house maybe even by yourself, showing certian DVDs on the market at the moment.
Thia allows you to comply with the law but also raises the awarness of all staff & shows your companys is serious about the workforce safety & wellbeing.
Or you could arrange for acompany to visit you workplace (cheap as chips)
Eaither way a RA should e carried out & a suitaly experienced person who can take charge if anything were to go wrong should be in place(peace of mind).
Regards
MrH&S
Hope this helps
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Rank: Forum user 
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That's what we do. Train everyone in either First aid at work or Emergency first aid.
Also everyone gets extinguisher and fire safety training. (done in house)
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Rank: Forum user
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Hi you stated you always have at least 1 of each, if everyone is trained in first aid, fire fighting & has fire extinguisher training, then you are covered.
Maybe you could appoint a senior first wider & fire fighter incase of an emergency & place there names in a prominent position within the workplace.
Also a drill could be carried out.
This would prevent confusion is an emergency were to occur
MrH&S
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Training everyone in 1st aid and firefighting or fire warden sounds ideal, but my employers have 9,000+ staff so it's totally impractical and not necessary to comply with legislation. How many employers have this sort of cash laying around
It would take 750 1st aider courses and 750 fire warden course = 1,500 courses! If that's a 2 hour course for a maximum of 12 staff per course = 36,000 man/hours. Even at £15 an hour, that well over a half a million pounds!!!
That's a lot of cash in terms of wages and lost production, when the alternative is targeting staff, which would cut the bill by at least a third
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Rank: Forum user
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Thanks for the response guys & the pm's.
If this situation does occur we do suspend the high risk activities until we do have cover.
Even though we already exceed the minimum legal requirement for cover, I'm in process of getting another couple of emergency first aiders trained and looking at a fire marshal train the trainer course so we can do internal training.
Yes, in an ideal world it would be nice to have everyone trained but even in a SME the size of ours, it's not always possible.
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Rank: Super forum user
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It's not a legal requirement at all to have fire marshals. While you should certainly be sure that everyone on site knows what to do in the event of a fire occurring, actually having fire marshals present all the time is a site choice not a legal one, even if it is considered good practice.
I used to work for a company where production requirements dictated an engineer had to be present when the factory was running. We simply trained the majority of our engineers (all those who were willing to do it) as first aiders. Two birds, one stone. Worked 99% of the time.
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