Posted By Aidan Toner
Consider any 'safety' standard assigned by law, industry, profession or commercial sector-Is your job generally frustrated more by a poorly designed safety standard than by a poorly interpreted one (ie by another proclaimed safety expert)??.I'm prompted to ask this question because iosh (formed to serve practitioners first and the employee/public second )might have to ensure its CORE function is interpretation of standards. (Iosh to provide a clear interpretation process, adjudicating in areas of uncertainty, highlighting good and bad instances of practitioner interpretation).Whilst not abandoning 'standard generation' iosh may have to relegate it to a well declared second place.????

Posted By Tabs
Prescriptive law (thou shalt do x, y, and z) was always easier to follow than the more open law we tend to have now (employer shall ensure, afarp, that things are safe).

In my opinion the latter has led to poor law, poor standards, and poor guidance at times. All of which are annoying. The latest smoking laws are a good example of badly written law.

It has to be said however - that prescriptive laws always seemed to lead to loopholes and exceptions. This led to amendment after amendment - none of which actually seemed to get written into the original document, but meant that one had to have about five documents and cross-reference or scribble on the original.

As the profession grows, we should see a convergance of approaches and standards - which should mean that interpretation becomes easier, and better guidance ensues.

In my opinion, the law-makers should not be able to publish new law without comprehensive and clearly-written guidance.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we could actually question the law-makers?.. "What did you mean when you wrote...?"

Posted By Aidan Toner
Thanks chaps for your replies.
I feel there seems to be more and more 'safety experts' out there offering misleading...poor...incorrect....wrong.. unsafe....dangerous......ADVICE.
I have to admit, I was trying to stir the pot to find out if there was a mass of iosh folk out there who feel the same way and want iosh to deal with these people as a priority item.

Posted By Aidan Toner
My thoughts related to iosh members only and like all professional bodies we would be obliged to hark back to our code of conduct-Section 8 is it???
I suspect any iosh action will 'initially' follow on 'only' after criminal action is successfully found against a member.Over time iosh may choose to copy some of the more established professions (ie legal and medical professions) and initiate disciplinary proceedings in advance, or even in absence of court actions.???

Posted By Pete48
Should this thread be on the members forum if it is going on to discuss IOSH policy like this??

Just a thought, stuff gets moved this way often enough, this looks like one that should be moved the other way?

Posted By Sally
I would see the problem as getting a consensus of agreement on what is 'poor advice' 'wrong advice'incompetent advice' etc. You only have to look at these message boards to know that if you ask three CMIOSH a question(assuming we take this as a benchmark of competence) you will often get three completely different answers.