Hello All,

Looking for a bit of clarity on an issue that has arisen at a place off work regarding a HSE visit that was carried out June - July last year. They issued a letter of their findings in Sept 2023 to the principal contractor of the site stating in the main points that they had contravened CDM section 2 and CLAW legislation with the works being carried out.

Subsequently this letter was suppressed by the principal contractor till Monday 11.06.2024 even though it is clearly marked on the initial page that the following must occur once this letter has been received by the offending party.

“It is important that you deal with these matters to protect people’s health and safety.  If you do not understand what action to take then please contact me or my Principal Inspector and we will explain further.

You will have to pay a fee because I have identified contraventions of health and safety law which are material breaches.  The enclosed section on Fee for Intervention provides further information.

Section 28(8) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 requires me to inform your employees about matters affecting their health and safety. As such, you should ensure a copy of this letter is brought to the attention of your employees.”

We have asked repeatedly for this information to be passed on from the date of the initial visit but have been unable to get this until as stated last Monday 11.06.2024.

What I am asking is there a precedence that gives companies the right to with hold this form of information and if there is what is it based on?

Also if this is not the case then what can be the implications to the company for carrying out this action and suppressing this information from the potentially affected parties.

Sorry should have said Sub contractor 

The inspector has highlighted issues with welfare provision and lead working. As a sub-contractor you are not "officially" an employee of their organisation so the comment about not being shown is just a gripe.

For the site itself did you have your own welfare or were you reliant upon others?

Was there any feed-back from your direct employees about site conditions?

What did any site audit reveal about site conditions?

If identified as wanting what did your company actually do to correct matters?

Hi David

This scenario is beset with problems starting with how long it took an Inspector to get round to writing a letter to the Principal Contractor.

Now Section 28(8) of HSWA says:

(8) Notwithstanding anything in the preceding subsection an inspector shall, incircumstances in which it is necessary to do so for the purpose of assisting in keeping persons (or the representatives of persons) employed at any premises adequately informed about matters affecting their health, safety and welfare, give to such persons or their representatives the following descriptions of information, that is to say—
(a) factual information obtained by him as mentioned in that subsection which relates to those premises or anything which was or is therein or was or is being done therein; and
(b) information with respect to any action which he has taken or proposes to take in or in connection with those premises in the performance of his functions; and, where an inspector does as aforesaid, he shall give the like information to the employer of the first-mentioned persons.

So it doesn't just apply to the employees of the Principal Contractor, but ALSO to employees of others caught up in whatever the Inspector thinks was wrong.

BUT the last bit also says that the Inspector must give similar information to any other employer of those that the Inspector is targeting to inform in terms of "persons employed".

It is POSSIBLE that none of what the Inspector had to say to the Principal Contractor was relevant to you as a sub-contractor AND your employees.

Suppose the Principal Contractor has subbies A, B, C, and D and you are subbie A.

Perhaps subbie D is doing "work with lead" and falls into the scope of various requirements of CLAW. May be they were stripping lead paint off wood as part of a refurbishment project. Your workers might or might not have come into the scope of CLAW depending on what they were doing and where they were working when subbie D was doing "work with lead".

But if this was happening last June or July, there is a very good chance that it's not happening now and that a higher MINIMUM standard for welfare facilities that might have been called for under CLAW no longer applies and you are back to the somewhat vague provisions of CDM Schedule 2.

Next issue is that you shouldn't be relying on the Principal Contractor to provide adequate welfare facilities, WHATEVER it might say in the Contract between you and the PC as you can't contract out of your criminal duties under legislation.

CDM Reg 13(4)(c) puts a duty on the Principal Contractor to provide adequate welfare facilities but Reg 15(11) says something very similar to each Contractor as regards their own employees. In effect belt and braces. 

Which might mean one of two scenarios:

A. The deficiencies in welfare identified by the Inspector were not relevant for your workforce.

B. You should consider yourselves lucky not to have ALSO been hit by Fee For Intervention!

Are YOU satisfied that YOUR workers have adequate welfare facilities?

Edited by user 12 June 2024 13:47:13(UTC)  | Reason: Formatting issue