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HSE visited one of my clients depots where their employees pick up vehicles and equipment beofore going to clients sits to carry out grounds maintenance. They have found lack of social distancing isn't as good as it should be and improvements are required. They say FFI applies; so is social distancing a material breach, and if the guys are wearing face coverings would this mitigate social distancing less than 1 metre
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Rank: Super forum user
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Bazzer - an FFI notice requires the Inspector to set out what legislation they consider to have been breached and why. If you come back with the answers to the justification for an FFI notice, we could comment from a better informed position. FFI doesn' count just because an Inspector mutters the letters. They have to produce a piece of paper!
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Hi Peter they visited Friday morning and my client is waiting for the jester from the HSE. They have already served an improvement notice for lack of warm running water, which the client is dealing with, but they never visited, just rang the client about social distancing and hand washing, client admitted there was no running water, so received a IN. then they turned up Friday morning, when all the lads arrived to collect vehicles etc. Whether they are tagging this on to the existing NI we'll see what the letter says
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Sorry meant letter from HSE
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Bazzer Government guidance does not make 2m a must or shall but a where you can. If you cant then you have to offer but not promote the use of RPE. Think the inspector is on a hiding to nothing from his superiors. You have not breached any legislation.
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 1 user thanked Bigmac1 for this useful post.
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Unless they have imposed restrictions...i.e. Leicester...then there is no legislation covering it...there are restrictions in The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020....however it says relevant person, however the HSE are not mentioned
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1 user thanked stevedm for this useful post.
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...I think with the HSE there is just an opportunity to claw back some FFI...somone has sparked that the employer has had to do a risk assessment and now you need to check compliance...we are auditing construction OH specifically around COVID-19 and covid aging all employees...respiratory issues that already exist in construction sites are having greater impact on hygeine compliance...but COVID-19 is just being added to the list of occupational diseases that need managing...
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We have been advised that we are being visited at 2 of our 18 sites by the HSE, they both happen to be our only lower tier COMAH sites, the visits are 1 this week and 1 next week. They told us they were visiting all lower tier COMAH sites. Scope - COVID-19 risk assessment
- Social distancing
- Cleaning and sanitising
- Information, instruction and training
- Monitoring of measures in place
They advised that the visit will not be cost recoverable under the COMAH regime but may be subject to Fee for Intervention (if a material breach is found). We think we have all controls etc in place from the GOV.UK Covid secure guidane but only time will tell. We have been debating what we think could be a material breach and can’t imagine we have made any, as we have all the handwashing, cleaning, social distancing etc regimes in place, with evidence or training and monitoring.
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1 user thanked flysafe for this useful post.
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Originally Posted by: flysafe 
We have been debating what we think could be a material breach and can’t imagine we have made any, as we have all the handwashing, cleaning, social distancing etc regimes in place, with evidence or training and monitoring.
Dont forget a material breach is anything an inspector want to put in writting! As for a breach in legislation, they could cound lack of social distancing as a Breach of section 2 or 3 HASAW - have said before i dont agree with this approach to a pandemic infection, and im sure many inspectors feel the same - but this is the route the Government and trade Unions are forceing them down.
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1 user thanked HSSnail for this useful post.
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If the HSE is really going this way then they opening themselves for a great deal of legal trouble. You can of course appeal anything that a HSE inspector says and it is for the courts via the Employment Tribunals, to decide whether any of this makes legal sense. I think that there are two possible outcomes either the judges ruling that this is not really anything to do with H&S (my view) or if the rule that it is it could well, open up the floodgates, with employers being responsible for any illness, infection or disease being brought into workplace. We might even have people being checked for scabies by the company nurse… madness but that could be the law in the future.
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1 user thanked A Kurdziel for this useful post.
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Is it time to go home yet? I think the world has truly gone mad! I had my HSE call yesterday to ask me what precautions we have taken for Covid 19 _ and the first question they asked me was “are you the person responsible for Health and Safety” when I finished banging my head against a wall explained I was the competent person as defined by the management regulations - could not believe the HSE would ask that question! Long story short we passed, but he did remind me that if anyone developed symptoms we had to tell them to go be tested (we do anyway as we are key workers just did not say it immediately – thought it was obvious!) Now are we saying they could be charged for the test? I thought this was being done by the health service? After years of underfunding the HSE and Local Authorities are now being tasked by the government to make sure people are standing 2M apart! Where has personal responsibility gone? I had to tell 4 of my colleagues off the other day for sitting round the same computer, thank goodness I’m CMIOSH or I may not have been able to see the risk!
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2 users thanked HSSnail for this useful post.
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Kate on 07/07/2020(UTC), aud on 07/07/2020(UTC)
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Brian- “I had my HSE call yesterday to ask me what precautions we have taken for Covid 19 _ and the first question they asked me was “are you the person responsible for Health and Safety!” There exists in Whitehall cage full; of monkeys that the government uses to cover for “exceptional circumstances”. These are people are specially trained to know nothing and understand less. They are given a script and simply follow that regardless. They are the people that they brought in to deal with the back log of farm payments 10 years ago. There are videos on line showing the sort of fun and games they got up to when left alone in the office overnight. During the foot and mouth outbreak back in 2002, one of them was asked to replenish the stockpile of railways sleepers that were being used to fuel the pyres of cattle etc. They got a good price for 10 000 of them; unfortunately they were concrete sleepers.
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1 user thanked A Kurdziel for this useful post.
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I would call it a sensible opening question for a cold call to determine they have reached the correct respondent.
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I would call it a sensible opening question for a cold call to determine they have reached the correct respondent.
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Brian, perhaps the caller had read the Competency Framework document and Membership Regrading proposals?
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1 user thanked peter gotch for this useful post.
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AK Hahahaha! Concrete sleepers - hahaha. Not heard that one. Brilliant.
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Originally Posted by: Roundtuit I would call it a sensible opening question for a cold call to determine they have reached the correct respondent.
Realy? I will have to go back and read HASWA again - because to my memory its the EMPLOYER thats responsible for health and safety!
But then as Peter so rightly says, even IOSH appear to have forgotten that with the new compitancy framework.
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Brian You are of course right. Approximately 30 years ago, the General Manager of a factory employing about 3000 seemed surprised when I (as an HSE Inspector) wanted him to sign receipt of a (my duplicate copy of a) Prohibition Notice when the company employed a full time Health and Safety person (can't remember their title) who was in the same room. I explained that it is management's duty to manage. He needed to own health and safety not his adviser.
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We recently had an ISO 45001 audit in which the auditor asked our MD who was responsible for H&S. Fortunately, the MD immediately gave the correct answer.
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Common sense prevails - employer Covid tests will not be taxed as BIK
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Rank: Super forum user
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Common sense prevails - employer Covid tests will not be taxed as BIK
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