Posted By Ed Mcgarrell Is anyone aware of the appauling health&Safety audit that has just been released by the HSE on the Scottish Ambulance Service.They have been served with seven improvement notices.Five of these are for manual handling ,one for not having any risk assessments in place and one advising that managers senior managers and directors do not have the appropriate H&S training to commensurate their responsibilities.The question i ask is the H&S manager accountable for this shambles.

Posted By MC Hi, As it is such a fine glorious morning, I feel unfair assumptions shouldn't be made! i.e. the Health and Safety Manager might be responsible for the bad state of H&S at the Scottish Ambulance Services. H&S is the responsibility of ALL employees, this is the basis of a positive H&S culture. Managers are ultimately responsible for H&S issues in their area of responsibility. The H&S manager is (or should be) the competent person in the organisation for advise only. I am sure we have all come across managers and directors, no matter how much good advice you give them, they will not make improvements until something goes wrong or the HSE chastens them. And then the improvements are enthusiastically discussed for a matter of a few weeks, then shelved. Hence the classis line in every H&S job advert that "the person must be able to influence strongly at every level of the company!" I can influence, produce miracles -I'll leave that to Moses and the chosen ones! Have a great day MC

Posted By Alias While it is possible the H&S Manager is either grossly incompetent or negligent, lets not forget us poor health and safety folk sometimes get ignored. I rant and rave about health and safety, I sometimes use the touchy feely approach, I sometimes show safety is profitable but at the end of the day the company mostly ignores me and I know on site right now there are probably 10+ guys working at height with no PPE and probably no training, that there are F.L.T's and pickers working ignorantly of all the people walking past them. Oh and just this morning I saw a huge extractor fan balancing on a high level window ledge with nothing keeping it there, I am just one person, it took me to point out that that was unsafe and unacceptable. We cannot do safety by ourselves and are often obstructed by the company, so I'd not automatically point the finger at the h&s manager, I'd point it squarely at senior management and the culture they set for the organisation. There are companies out there who say "yeah I see you point, that isn't safe but that's just life and we can't afford to do it properly."

Posted By Alias Hi Phillip, I do 'advise' that it's grossly unsafe, I tell it to them 10 different ways and the company acknowledges it's unsafe, but due to commercial pressures that's just the way it has to be etc. etc. Enforcement bods come on site and say that's unsafe you really need to do something about it and then write us a letter and do no follow up because if they did then they would see we ignored them. This has happened countless times and I feel it's quite criminal of both us and the enforcing authority but that said we are in somewhat of a unique situation where latitude allows us to continue in business, clamping down on us and making us comply fully with all legislation would be enough to criple this particular industry. That said we have very few fatalities, only a handful in recent years, we have a fair few major injuries though but we suffer from gross under reporting because we use so many multidisciplined contractors. I want nothing more than the enforcing authroity to ride in here and issue improvement and prohibition notices but they haven't which leaves me in a very difficult position. I want nothing more than to raise this with all the people I know but it's more than my job's worth so I stay and do the best I can making the changes the company allow, which are almost always after a major accident.

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