Posted By KEVIN O'KANE I came across this "letter of the day" yesterday in the Daily Express ( a great friend of our profession) " I have received a three page risk assesssment from the council on the dangers - wait for it-having an allotment.This includes the risk of drowning in my rainwater butt ( I'm now required to keep a lid on it),or blinding myself on a rubber-bean cane. It is clear that health & safety in this country and the public bodies responible for this sort of lunacy have finally lost all sense of proportion. Now I realise this is born out of a local authoritys fear of being sued.But Health & safety is supposed to be about the probabilty of accidents occurring , not about acts of deliberate stupidity. Surely , in determining compensation claims , courts should take into acount what is reasonable behaviour and what is not. As for my allotment , I've decided to give it up and take up sky-diving instead" In the same paper a full page advert from the HSE (cost ££££) "Does Health & Safety pay? From a marketing perspective, which one do you think got the message across?....answer s on a postcard please. This job is getting harder and harder!!

Posted By Aidan Toner Might I suggest Kevin that a H/S professional was PROBOBLY NOT involved in the production of the allotment generic risk assessment /advice note. I would suspect that some insurer's office picked up on one or two incidents (maybe not even progressing as far as civil claim payout) and took down of a dusty shelf somewhere a one size fits all advice note on allotments.This advice note (probobly compiled by some statistician)was then circulated through the brokers to their clients and masked as best practice or worse still a legal requirement. ----Maybe its about time us H/S professionals take on the insurers and do not leave evaluation of risk up to the bottom figure on their financial actuary's table.-----I have a theoryand it goes like this, IF the H/S profession held back all the accident and near miss information from their companies insurers, there would be alot less 'bad health and safety stories' such as the allotments or cutting down the chessnut trees to avoid falling conquers etc. etc. Maybe the insurers will be the death of Health and Safety????.Why is the H/S profession the constant stooge to the insurers???