Posted By R Joe An interesting item on the bbc breakfast programme this morning was a councillor from Chelsea (I think) talking about the government’s new ‘anti ambulance chaser’ legislation announced today. In giving examples of people and organisations being petrified about the prospect of claims – and hence the (health and safety) response to this – he cited (1) a volunteer who wanted to take a group of old ladies for a walk in a local park being required to have a risk assessment by a ‘risk assessment officer’ which contained a finding / warning of ‘mud – watch your step’. (2) The proliferation of signs over hot water taps warning of ‘hot water’. His view was that surely the money spent on these things could be better spent. On the basis of watching this item what percentage of the UK population would disagree do we think? As ever, this may well not be the ‘fully story’ but the reporting of these things in this way clearly doesn’t help the case of the ‘health and safety professional’ – nothing new here. One of the key things, however, in my view is our pressing collective, professional need to now restore a sense of perspective to the ‘risk assessment’ process itself, including a focus on significant risks and, in addition, their distinction from what most people would consider to be ‘everyday risks’ which most people should be able to appreciate and take account of e.g. going for a walk in park will require people to think about their footwear, and a hot water tap can be expected to contain hot water unless it were marked otherwise e.g. ‘scalding hot water’ – in which case the question would be why can’t this be avoided? It could well be argued that we as the profession (aided, abetted, pushed and cajoled by the enforcing authorities in some cases) have, in effect, now raised ‘risk assessment’ to the level of an answer and panacea to everything. Just like (the early days??) of COSHH, everything now needs a ‘risk assessment’ and just like COSHH in many, many, many cases we are no better at actually managing the significant risks despite the weight of additional paperwork now created. I believe that we should take a long hard, collective look again at what the Management Regs ACoP actually says about risk assessment i.e. starting with it being a ‘systematic GENERAL examination’ along with the examples of risk assessment in practice that HSE have given in HSG183 ‘5 Steps to Risk Assessment – Case Studies’. Because, although most of us could find plenty of weakness with each of the case studies, we have, in effect, taken and/or allowed ourselves to be pushed to the opposite end of the ‘risk assessment’ continuum where we have lost all sense of perspective and now spend a lot of time agonising about either (1) not having a ‘risk assessment’ for everything that moves and/or (2) that despite the sheer number and weight of ‘risk assessments’ that we now have, we have still missed something - like mud in the park. Don’t misunderstand me, risk assessment is a GREAT tool used as it should be – and I believe as it was intended. However, in my view, we now need to collectively stand up and reclaim this perspective with the backing from IOSH, and where it’s needed, fight our corner (including protecting our members in court if necessary) to ensure that we retain risk assessment as the useful tool it should be, and not an increasingly derided requirement for every activity that exists, 'imposed' by a growing army of ‘risk assessment officers’. Regards RJ

Posted By JB Getting off the theme, but whenever I see the "scalding hot water" notice in a washroom, I have to smile and ask "WHY?". The fact there is scalding hot water indicates a lack of control, rather than indicating that a risk assessment may have been carried out.

Posted By Nigel Hammond It's all very well shrugging our shoulders and expecting all risk assessments to only focus on significant risks. The HSE says they should be suitable and sufficient but not perfect. This is very much down to individuals outlook. As I said in my earlier thread there seems to be a spectrum of personality types ranging from the sloppy to the pedantic. So there will always be over the top H&S decisions just as there will be sloppy H&S decisions. It's the extreme decisions that the media love because it is sensational reporting - especially if it can be taken completely out of context. I like that acronym CIA - what can we Control, Influence and Accept. 'Control the media'? - no way unless your names Rupert Murdoch. 'Influence the media' - yes - when ever you hear or read something that gives H&S a bad name email, text etc to complain/give your professional view. We can also remind people that H&S is a positive thing and it’s not about stopping people doing things they enjoy. Perhaps we should also influence the HSE to produce better guidance on risk assessments - with lots of worked examples - instead of their "five steps" which is a joke in it terms of its over-simplicity and is inconsistent with their guidance in HSG65. 'Accept' - accept that the media is all about playing on the public's prejudices and being sensational.

Posted By R Joe I'm not convinced that risk assessment will, or at least should be, always open to attack. And, if it is, we have helped bring this on ourselves by the growing tendency to cite 'risk assessment' as some sort of blanket requirement and answer for everything. My suggestion was that if IOSH as our collective professional voice used our collective expertise and practical experience of doing risk assessment to produce a sufficiently authoritative, good practice professional standard, we could better set the standard ourselves and then defend it as necessary. Backed by IOSH, the enforcing authorities would need to recognise its value and status. Regards RJ

Posted By Al.. I am reminded of this extract taken from a paper by John Rimington, one time Director-General of the HSE, written I think on his retirement from the Civil Service in 1995: “The Community’s 3rd health and safety action programme (1988) included the six major new worker protection directives which became the “Six pack” in January 1993. During the very hurried negotiations on the framework directive, the UK found itself in a collapsing minority in defence of its main principle - that health and safety law should be founded on reasonable practicability, involving a balancing of cost against risk. We contrived to substitute for it the principle which we consider equivalent - that health and safety measures should be based on an assessment of risk. Unfortunately in the course of negotiations, our proposals became amplified into a decision in favour of written risk assessments applying on a very wide scale. I believe written risk assessment to be a useful discipline so long as it is strictly confined to important risks; but applied too widely it can easily become bureaucratic bindweed preventing small firms in particular from seeing and doing the obvious.”

Posted By Nigel Hammond I agree with Stupendous Man in terms of defining 'significant' risk. The trouble is that 'significant'is one of those words like 'competent' and 'acceptable' - how could you ever define it? May be it could be defined in terms of severity and likelihood (e.g. - severity - capable of causing an over three day injury with a medium likelihood - mind you even when you break down risk ratings these are still widely open to interpretation! May be we could have loads of examples of significant risks - and more importantly; 'insignificant' risks. I can't imagine the HSE or IOSH sticking it's neck on the line and giving examples of insignificant risks though. There are lots of intellegent people on this forum. It would be interesting to see if anyone can come up with a robust definition of 'Significant' and 'insignificant' risk.

Posted By Martyn Hendrie Without wishing to detract from the process of risk assessment as a useful technique for eliminating/minimising and controlling risk. I have always considered that the HSE give an indication as to how far the law requires risk assesments to be written down in the approved code of practice and guidance to the Work Equipment Regulations. Clauses 136 (acop) and 137 (guidance) make a direct reference to the Management Regs (reg 3) in relation to risk assessing when equipment requires an inspection. Clause 137 (guidance) states " A significant risk is one which could forseeably result in a major injury or worse" Personally I would tend towards any accident that is reportable to HSE (or other enforcing authority) would be significant. Management Regs (reg 3) requires significant risks to be recorded As a trainer I take the line that the law requires us to "risk assess" everything (i.e.think carefully about everything we do and take precautions to prevent injury) but it does not require us to write everything down.

Posted By Nigel Hammond From Martyn's post; <<>> This is an interesting point. When they say 'major' I wonder if this relates to Reportable major injuries (in RIDDOR) which are defined and are pretty extreme - or whether this is a more general classification of harm. If so, I wonder if this is defined anywhere. Our in-house definition of 'major harm' would be something capable of causing permanent injury or death. This definition would include scalding hot water but not slippery mud (referred to at the start of this thread.)

Posted By Richard Webber I work in the Construction Industry and have long felt that we have gone off on something of a tangent with regard to risk assessment. The risk assessment process often seems to have become an end in itself rather than a necessary step towards selecting safe systems of work. I am fully convinced of the need and desirability of a systematic approach to the identification of significant hazard; I am not so convinced that it is ALWAYS necessary to produce discrete risk assessment paperwork. Maybe it would be in a Firework factory, but not on a Construction site The purpose of the risk assessment process is to identify significant hazards and select suitable control measures (taking into account all relevant hierarchies). These suitable control measures are the ‘significant findings’ that must be recorded. For Construction operations, significant findings (necessary control measures) are presented in the form of Site Plans (Fire, Transport, Material distribution etc.) and Safety Method Statements. The ‘audience’ for these documents are the site managers and operatives. The Plans and Statements should be written in plain English, which can be understood by all who need the information. Risk assessment matrices do not convey any clear information to these groups and should form no part of the documentation. If Site Plans and Safety Method Statement record the significant findings of the risk assessment process why do we need any other paperwork? Richard

Posted By Raymond Rapp Once again Al has highlighted a very good example. I think from the majority of responses thus far it is clear that h&s practitioners in the main concur with the original posting. I personally do not blame the overly prescriptive use of the risk assessment process on over zealous practitioners. Rather, I think the problem lies with senior management who often have a poor understanding of the concepts and generally consider large wordy documents the panacea that will insulate them if things go wrong. In h&s terms, less is more and not the other way round. Ray

Posted By Robert K Lewis Just a thought for the day arising out of the Demos document - The Risk Management of Everything - If IOSH take up Al's suggestion then they face the risk of something going wrong and a finger pointed towards the Institution. Most of our risk assessments are now driven by a need to protect reputation as much, if not more, than a need to induce safe working. What rings the bells of your managers - Loss of reputation or injury to staff? Bob

Posted By Helen Horton I don't think we have enough information to judge if risk assessment in this case was the right thing to do or not. We have no information about the elderly people, were they all able bodied? Sound not only in wind and limb but mind too, or did they need someone to care for them and guide them away from harm? If the latter then it would be reasonable to do a risk assessment and provide instructions to those accompanying the party, after all as we all know you can't rely on common sense to ensure that they won't be lead across puddles and through mud baths. On the question of the "Scalding hot water" signs over taps then we only have ourselves to blame in a sense as in most situations the water has to be kept hot to avoid growth of legionella. A case of solving one problem but creating another. Where my Dad lived the water was checked for legionella regularly and the temperature at the tap was hot enough to scald, elderly people don't have good memories and often have reduced sensation in their extremities meaning that they can easily be scalded. In this situation signs over the taps is a good reminder that the water is hot and to take care. I think both the journalists reporting these stories and those who have responded here have jumped to conclusions without full knowledge of the facts which is something we need to avoid if we are to retain credibility.

Posted By Raymond Rapp It's no good 'sitting on the fence'. We have to be positive and honest, in fact, these days most people experience more hazards and risks travelling to and from work than they ever do at work or even in the home. Identifying significant risks should mean exactly that and not some pontificating excuse about ending up before the bench for failing to include some trivial risk assessment. Even the law has a modicum of common sense. Ray

Posted By Nigel Hammond Al.., I must confess I have not read the SHP article yet and my copy is at home so I cannot refer to it at at the moment. I can only comment on your quote from the article. I don’t feel this quote is realistic for many of us. I am the H&S adviser for a charity that employees 1500 staff and supports 700 people with learning disabilities with about 150 sites. I would need the same magic powers as Father Christmas if I wanted to visit every site and help them plan their H&S precautions for all significant risks! I'm sure I am not alone in being spread this thin. I’ve often found that if you help people before they even attempt to compile THEIR risk assessments, they tend not to think for themselves and fail to take ownership for H&S. I like risk assessment. It's always easy to criticise but it is a very useful tool for getting people to plan ahead and prevent 'unforeseen' accidents and occupational illness. However for it to be effective it needs to be part of a good health & safety management system that everyone understands. Coming back to this debate, I still think we need better guidance about what level of risks people record!

Posted By nic smith The problem we have is with the solicitors who make huge amounts of money from our claim culture. Human nature appears to be the need to screw-over everything from Insurance companies to employers. It is time that all people involoved with H&S should support common sense, instead of supporting the claim culture.

Posted By Robert K Lewis Peter When reg 8(1) of CHSWR is considered it, for me at least, is not intended to deal with a collapse of a scaffold but rather work materials, tools or similar falling off a workplace. For the HSE to invoke this one really has to wonder what was driving them to use this when reg 9(1) would have appeared to be correct. Something is amiss here do you not think? BUT, and it is a big BUT, there was a conviction and the rest is history. I have been rapped recently elsewhere for moaning about uneven enforcement so am pleased to let you take the flak for this. Bob

Posted By Merv Newman I'm not really adding much to the discussion but thought you might like to hear about a rather extreme "Risk Assessment" exercise. Undertaken by the safety person of a site that refurbishes armoured personnel carriers. Operation : Bolting piece A to piece B 1. Take nut from box. Weight of nut ? Frequency ? (nuts per day). Mental stress ?(selection of correct nut). Hand/arm movement ?(distance from body, Angle, carry distance 2. Hand tighten nut. Weight of nut ? Frictional resistance ? (newtons per thread-meter). Frequence (nuts per day). Hand/arm movement (distance from body, angle, weight of nut). Mental stress ? (how tight ?) 3. tighten nut with spanner. Mental stress (correct spanner) Weight of spanner ? Frequency ? Hand/arm movement, distance/weight/angle ? Muscular stress ? (newtons). Mental stress (is that tight enough ?) 4. Replace spanner on hook. Weight, frequency, distance, angle, correct hook ? We have some clients that we refer to as our "Aaaaaargh" clients. But this is not one of them. Their LTI record is pretty good (2 years clear) but the safety person needs a LITTLE bit of educating. Merv (12th march, mine's an Aberlor, no ice)

Posted By Al.. Reading through this thread again I feel that getting it right, i.e. concentrating on the significant risks, ignoring the trivial and ensuring that we meet the requirement to do what is “reasonably practicable”, is really just a matter of judgement. As a one gains more experience of more and varied situations , then it becomes increasingly easy to exercise that judgement. I think it very difficult to create a methodology for assessing risk which tries to substitute for that experience – and this is what I think those who advocate the use of matrices or other tools for risk assessment are trying to do. Of course we sometimes get these judgement calls wrong but we are in the business of risk management, not risk elimination, so it is inevitable that there will be accidents, prosecutions and claims from time to time. All we can hope is that by exercising judgement we can keep them under a reasonable degree of control and not have too many.

Posted By peter gotch Hi R Joe, No they weren't prosecuted for blocking the escapes - they had erected the structure, so as not to. But the prosecution tried to expand their contention that the risk assessment was inadequate by commenting that the record did not specifically tell these highly experienced operatives how to suck eggs. Other aspects as to why HSE thought the risk assessment was inadequate were not accepted by the bench. But, yes the implication of the magistrates' decision is that I need a piece of paper to tell me to press the button and wait for the green man before crossing the road outside this office. ...and in particular the record of our risk assessment for staff [when at work] walking from this office needs to tell them that red light jumping by drivers with mobile phones and/or designer number plates and/or 4x4s is particularly prevalent at busy junction at the corner of this office block. Regards, Peter

Posted By David Kimmins I think our frustration is misplaced. Let's not look at the safety profession for overindulgence of risk assessments but look outside of it to the legal profession and their interpretation and use of H&S law and regulations. If we are truly holistic and consequently employed to reduce risk to our companies, and one of those risks are ‘not having a risk assessment’ means 'guilty' and a fine (rightly or wrongly). Is it not reasonable for our employers to expect us to have done a risk assessment for legal defence. Thus reducing our employers cost/liability/risk call it what you will. Now how does IOSH plan to stem the tide of ambulance chasing, or no risk assessment chasing lawyers.