Why was he eligible? As you have indicated a long term site presence and you become part of the furniture so much so that many end up thinking you are an employee.

I hate to say this but from your brief post it appears your company is incredibly poor on contractor controls.

As a matter of urgency you need to determine:

1) Who is their employer (who pays them)?

2) What contractual arrangements are in place? It could be that the actual contract includes OH arrangements but no one informed HR.

3) In the absence of an employer deal with this Tier 3 as though they are an employee until matters are resolved. No good leaving them working and getting worse.

Please be considerate - contractor or not they are still a human being.

Hi Anet, 

Roundtuit's response reads a bit harshly, so I will try and soften the message a little by saying that lots of companies are poor when it comes to managing contractor activities whether done on site or out of sight, hence as an example, the regular adverse coverage about major retailers not looking closely enough about conditions in their overseas supply chains in e.g. clothing production.

It is a long established principle that someone cannot contract out of their criminal (statutory) duties, however much some try to do so.

I suggest you do all the things that Roundtuit suggests as part of looking into what to do to help ensure that this person's condition is not exacerbated in their work for you.

Might be that the HAVS is nothing to do with what they do at work at your premises, though this is probably unlikely - BUT they could be doing lots of DIY as example and keen on using their growing collection of boy's tools and possibly doing jobs on the side to make even more use of vibrating tools.

So, try to find out what they do for you and what that means in terms of risk to hand arm vibration.

....which includes asking the Contractor for their risk assessments and then making a judgement as to how "suitable and sufficient" these are. If the Contractor's workers use power tools and there is no mention of vibration in the risk assessments, then you probably have cause to ask plenty of QQ which are likely to expand beyond risk of HAVS.