Do you mean a nursery or a pre school hours school club?

SBH

How can OFSTED expect you to produce these documents if they have not issued any guidance? Could it be because - “Ofsted is not a health and safety authority and it is not responsible for auditing health and safety standards within the learning environment.”?

That is a quote from https://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/i/ofsted%20and%20health%20and%20safety.pdf

Anything that OFSTED produces in relation to H&S is not regulations, nor an ACoP. It is not even “Best Industry Practice”; it is just the opinion of a group of educationalists based on their “common sense”. For example I come across places where the OFSTE inspectors have insisted that pre-school nurseries have those plastic covers on sockets which, every H&S professional knows, are at best useless and at worse dangerous. See this DoH guidance note about the use of socket covers- https://www.health-ni.go.../health/EFA-2016-002.pdf

Use your H&S knowledge and understanding to produce the appropriate risk assessments based on what the HSE require. This is a start- http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/classroom-checklist.pdf. More on HSE website.

Kurdziel - whats wrong with OFSTED saying that: "we would expect our subject specialist inspectors to have a working knowledge of the relevant guidance from the Health and Safety Executive. However, inspectors are not health and safety experts and cannot be expected to have the detailed knowledge which appropriately qualified specialists in this field possess". Is that not the reason why his employer gave S Gibson the job? this includes the reasons not to use socket covers.

If you trawl the HSE website http://www.hse.gov.uk/services/education/index.htm there is some general guidance available.

have a look at some schools websites, some have nurseries / pre-school embeded and many have their policies and RA available to view for comparison and download

Originally Posted by: O'Donnell54548

I agree, I had similar problems in my last job with the CQC.

Except CQC ARE h&s inspectors these days post Staffordshire hospital reviews.

Thank you Kurdziel, save me a lot of typing :)

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

That’s not strictly speaking true: the CQC are not H&S inspectors under Health and Safety at Work Act. The MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) explains the areas which the HSE/LA’s cover and those that CGC cover. There is overlap but they are separate areas.  See http://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/20180202_mou_between_cqc_hse_las.pdf for a copy of the MOU.

The only bodies that enforce the Health and Safety at Work Act are:

• HSE-see http://www.hse.gov.uk/fo...g/og-00073-appendix1.htm
• Local Authorities-see http://www.hse.gov.uk/fo...g/og-00073-appendix1.htm
• Office of Rail Regulator
• Marine Accident Investigation Branch and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) at sea
• CAA-Civil Aviation Authority on planes
• ONR-Office of the Nuclear Regulator

Anybody else who tells you that what they are doing is enforcing the Health and Safety at Work Act is lying.

Not lost on me but was aiming for a one line response.

"Whilst not being authorised inspectors under HASWA, CQC ARE 'inspecting' for reasons of health and safety and in many situations are applying HSE guidance" might have been a better line....  There is a reason a bunch of HSE officers went to train, join and assist the CQC at the time of the first MoU.

Legionella is a good example in which the burden was recently shifted in the latest MoU more clearly towards CQC enforcement over HSE/LA.

Still at least some formalisation of CQC role exists here unlike OFSTED.