Hi all

We are a contractor and have been asked by the client to be approved to work on site by a private health and safety consultancy. For this pleasure they are asking us to pay £120. It has made me incredibly angry as we are approved by CHAS, a member of Constructionline, and therefore do not see any reason why we should have to pay a private company to be approved for something that means nothing.

This is in our opinion a blatant money making scam between the client and H&S consultancy. Obviously it seems we will go ahead with it because as usual their answer to our moans is 'do you want to continue working with us?' therefore we'll have to pay up and shut up.

Anyone come across this before? The consultancy is a registered member of the SSIP and states in its literature that its a major bonus to us to be approved by the SSIP? what is the SSIP? is it a bonus?

It just seems to us now that all h&s has become is a money making scheme and the further it goes with these schemes it might actually push health and safety backwards as companies decide to not pay. Just my opinion but we certainly cannot in current trading conditions continue to pay private H&S companies £120 every year to work for each client. We happen to be pro active in our approach to H&S, we are a small company of less than 20 employees and employ a full time health and safety adviser. Our adviser probably has more qualifications than the bloke at the other end approving what is a dismal effort of a pre qual questionnaire.

Thoughts?

Without sounding negative in any way, if you employ a safety advisor as described then that person should have made you aware of SSIP and gone through the implications regarding your business?

Yes. But this was not what i was meaning, my adviser could talk me through SSIP, i could read up on SSIP, i could ring SSIP. I know i asked 'what is SSIP' but i more implying 'what is SSIP in relation to the health and safety consultancy being a registered member?' does this have some special bearing on things?