LBWF seem to me to not know much about Health and Safety and in particular their responsibilities when placing young people with Training Providers and ensuring they estabilsh the arrangements the Training Provider has in place to ensure the safety of the young students. Rather than being 'concerned' there is full time H&S officer should be quite the opposite and considered as a 'positive'.

No default requirement to employ a full time H&S person so the LA are quite correct in challenging it. They will know the details of your organisation better than we do so if they are 'concerned' that suggests simply that they do not consider it necessary to pay for such support in your case.

It is quite common for small enterprises to use outside assistance when required. It is no different for a training organisation that works with young people. I know many who manage their H&S very effectively without a full time H&S person. Some may be your competitors?

So, even if some might find it surprising on first view, I would say that it is far from a nonsense comment. It is good business to find the best value. If you consider that some high risk businesses do not employ a full time H&S person it puts your work into perspective with regard to the need for such full time support.


p48

Were they not simply justifying their business decision to discontinue using the training provider because of the costs, which they considered to be excessive? I would imagine similar decisions are being made by LAs across the country in this financial climate.

Sounds a bit like the OP’s boss has passed this comment on for them to justify their position. If the OP’s week is fully taken up with things to do ( ie 5 days x 8 hrs), then the time of a consultant for the same period of time would surely be far more expensive. I’m not a consultant but from threads on this site day rates seem to start about £250 and go up above £600 / day. The cost of this at say 20 workings days /month would be (@ £250) £5k per month, so £60K per year. If the OP is getting less than this then the company have a bargain. I am assuming that consultants can only work at the same rate as the rest of us and cannot do the same amount of work in 2.5 days as an in-house person can do in 5 days.

Only the OP knows exactly how hard they works, and how much work they do which is not H&S.

As I recall standard 9 of HASPS indicated - Access to competent Advice. It is reasonable for any organisation not to employ a full time H&S person. However, having been a regional H&S manager for the LSC in my experience Training Providers with full time H&S staff were much better managed and provided learners with all that was required for a safe, healthy and supportive learning environment.

Sounds to me that this is a simple case of a local authority trying to make cuts to balance the books and justifying these cuts by suggesting that the supplier are not giving value for money.

When I was self employed for a NHS Trust, they unilaterally changed the way they trained front line staff in fire safety (in terms of the frequency, contents and duration of courses) to below that as set out in the NHS fire safety codes. This was worrying enough as it would cut the days I would be required. But then I caught sight of a memo which basically said that I (the Trusts fire safety adviser) had agreed the changes. I was furious and sent a batch of e-mails internally denying it. Eventually the situation became untenable and I parted company with this bunch of cowboys.

Now when pressure is on to cut budgets, some public financed services will see H&S as an easy target, or an easy excuse for cuts.

Difficult times for most just now Rob, and no-one wants to be losing work and income.
Local Authorities also have some tough budget decisions to make and it may be their legitimate decision to stop funding this activity entirely.

No-one likes making these calls and there are occassions when the client's reps. will flannel and bluster around side issues rather than just telling it how it is. For me, it does seem a bit grandiose for a training provider to have a full-time safety manager, (sufficient to have ready access to a qualified experienced practitioner?) but in this particular context that's essentially irrelevant and nobody's business.

If you have a Contract with the LA then you should have a remedy via that contract for cancellation & recompense.
If the LA is looking to reduce costs (as opposed to cancelling the provision) then they are normally obliged to apply open tender processes (I'm surmising that this type of provision would meet the usual procurement £ thresholds) and market rules and forces will apply.