Posted By Chris Harris With 20+ experience of sales, operations, distribution and management within the wholesale licensed/hospitality trade, I radically changed career into the Health & Safety aspects of this sector in 1997. I am now 53. Gaining my NEBOSH Certificate and IOSH Managing Safely Certificate as well as Advanced Food Hygiene qualifications I gpassed my Diploma 1 in 2001. I have vountarily been on CPD since 1998 after gaining a NVQ 3in training & development. Question? Can I ask other IOSH & or CIEH members out there if this is a reasonable level of competency for giving H & S advice along with inspecting, auditing and training within the licensed hotel and catering sectors ? Or not? All comments greatly appreciated to settle an internal disagreement. Chris Harris

Posted By Dave Wilson Good question mate ! Firstly as far as CIEH and Food Hygine goes there are specific standards for inspecting and auditing premises for food hygiene. Cant remember the Specific document number which gives this. Now H&S advice I have experience of Consultants with NO H&S qualifications at all and one of them had actually failed the Cert twice!! I feel that any one is competent to givr H&S advice if like Paul says above they have the experience, knowledge and any other attribute which makes the advice they give as clear and more importantly clearly understood. The problem with off the shelf H&A Auditing proformas which are easy to fill in but if you do not have access to competent advice then you will have no idea what to do with the results. As far a competency goes the onnly true test is in the courts where the Management regs stipulate access to competent H&S resources but dont know of any prosecutions as yet.

Posted By Paul Hi Chris, Like yourself I'm also qualified to TechSP level. I also believe myself to be as capable and competent as many other more academically qualified professionals when working in my own sector. I have around 18yrs experience in a very diverse engineering - manufacturing facility that would test the ability of most safety professionals. In my line of work, academic qualifications are not necessarily as important as grass roots experience gained on the job. I do however, believe that CPD should be central to anyone working in an advisory capacity.

Posted By Lorna Morris This is more for Chris Harris! As an ex-EHO(we're called Environmental Hleath Practitioners when we leave enforcement), I am going to defend my profession.IOSH membership certainly wasn't automatic when I applied - there seemed to be some aversion to enforcement officers joining. The CIEH has had a compulsory CPD scheme for years - if you don't do it, you're chucked out! I do CPD for both which isn't easy as some courses aren't acceptable to both so I can understand why some people just stick to the one they have to do. As for qualifications versus experience, I know too many qualified people who have learnt nothing - the first is useful as a building block but the second is probably more important.