Hi We have had an incident of a pupil who's hand was trapped in the hinge side of a door to the toilets, it happened whilst a fight was taking place between two other students, he was pushed againt the door and someone shut it thus trapping his hand. It resulted in his hand being cut open. We have never had a situation like this with older students (we have installed Finger Guards in our Creche for younger children), should we be looking at installing them now to other areas? as i say it's never been a problem with classroom doors or any other doors in the past. Paul

Absolutely not. This is a discipline issue and nothing more. Where would it end? Having to take out windows in case someone got shoved through glass? It's the old chestnut about weighing up the risk v the likelihood v cost, but I for one would not start going down that road.

I am not making a judgement on this one but, a restuarant was prosecuted recently for not providing hinge guards on its toilet doors. An incident occurred and shortly afterwards another one resulting in a person losing their finger if memory serves me correct. The rationale is that once an incident has occurred, there is a greater onus on the duty holder to take steps to remedy the cause. The fight would be incidental in this respect, in my opinion. Ray

I suggest that you look at the frequency of this type of accident and decide appropriate measures from that knowledge. If in that review you discover you are having one type of incident frequently, then you would probably be better spending the effort and money on the most frequent type of incident as it will affect the most people.

Paul I can see both sides of this. It is perhaps disproportionate to have to do it under normal circumstances, but with an incident having taken place, if it happens again - for whatever reason - what defence would you have in the light of a claim? Imagine the parent: 'This happened before and you did nothing, and now it has happened to my child? How is this acting responsibly?' etc, yada yada. Look what happened in R v Porter when he did nothing wrong(I know, different, etc). I agree with both sides but my gut feeling is that to do nothing is unwise. At least if you do not take any further action record in detail that you have revised the relevant risk assessment, and give specific reasons for your decisions. Might be worth passing it to whoever deals with insurance cover for their input. Sad, but true: Freelance and Ray are on the button, in my opinion. Martin