more info please as a social worker visiting a client in their home can be different because of the culture of social workers to a plumber working in a private abode

We have had this sort of issues with some of our inspectors. The our policy is: 1. Our staff must not put themselves at risk to get the job done- if they feel threatened or are actually under threat they are told to get out and report this matter. We support our staff and being intimidated by a client is not an admission of failure on their part. 2. We report all, such incidents to the police who can and have taken action against individuals who have threatened our staff. We are not worried about “bad publicity 3. In every case the line manager of the person involved is expected to get in touch with the threatening individual and to warn them that their behaviour is unacceptable. They make it clear that we may remove our services from them. If that means that their business is no longer able to function, that is their problem not ours. 4. We warn staff about the issues surrounding this individual. We have to be careful not to broadcast this as this would infringe Data Protection but there is nothing wrong with telling those people who might come into contact with the individual of the possible risks. We expect our staff to modify their risk assessment appropriately if they are dealing with such an individual and to consider things like doubling up on staff, asking the police for support or simply not visiting the premises.

Its important to consider the employees actions and not just the aggressor during any investigation, as it is only their actions and behaviour that the employer can control. I am intrigued that you would have aborted the visit, but your colleague pressed ahead. I used to work in a team of 14 fire safety inspectors. We had very few problems with aggression/lone working scenarios. However, when there was an incident it was always the same three staff involved. Incidents ranged from an office chair thrown at one, a serious threat of violence made at another, and one guy hospitalised when he was poisoned at a follow up inspection after the previous visit was abandoned due to aggressive behaviour by the business owner. He collapsed whilst waiting for the RAC to repair his four shredded tyres he found when he returned to his car! Thankfully, due to the previous incident, he had taken a colleague along as a safety measure I was obvious to me - as I had worked in the field with all 3 of my colleagues - that they had an entirely different approach to applying their unique 'powers of entry' than I did. An approach bordering on what can only be described as 'jobsworths', confrontational and aggressive on occasions. Proper and strict procedures must be applied at all times with a gentle approach and a 'walk-away' default position as the main message. Though how one enforces that in a lone/unsupervised worker is a huge problem.