https://www.ioshmagazine.com/2020/04/20/hse-issues-social-distancing-warning-employers

Anyone seen the recruitment ad for whoever is supposed to serve the Notices?

P

Edited by user 21 April 2020 16:35:08(UTC)  | Reason: Amended title - too touchy feely instead of toughy feely

That reminds me of Asimov's story in which a technology had been developed that could extract the essential meaning from any text and put it into plain language.  When a diplomat's fine-sounding speech was run through the machine to check what he was really promising, the output was a blank piece of paper because everything he had said had been negated by another part of what he had said.  Should ensure, that they are able, where possible, where possible - that means absolutely nothing in the end.

 This is pure internal politics. The government is tearing itself apart over the Covid 19 crisis. Currently the Department of Health along with the the NHS and PHE are in charge but they are being challenged by the rest of the civil service who want to start looking at lifting the lockdown as soon as possible. This would mean that the Department of Health will surrender that power. More power than it has ever had in its history. So it is pushing back to hold onto power. The person who decides which of these groups gets their way is Boris Johnson. Unfortunately he is psychologically incapable of running a whelk stall: his talent is getting himself elected by saying anything that might please his electorate. There is no election due so he has nothing to say.

The HSE are not that really interested in Covid 19. This is a public health issue and if you read COSHH for example it is clear that public health issues generally do not impact of Health and Safety. Employers are only responsible for things that are under their control. In the past the HSE has therefore been loath to get involved in things like smoking at work, stress or driving for work. As far as they are concerned those things are not really in their remit.

As people have pointed out the piece that the HSE has put out is basically meaningless. It is obviously something that they have been fored to write under duress from the DoH. There are clues in the way it is written, in particular they mention enforcement notices. There is, of course, no such thing as enforcement notice.

There are improvement notices, which the HSE can use if they believe someone “is contravening one or more of the relevant statutory provisions (Health and Safety at Work Act etc)”. But there are no specific H&S laws establishing the 2 m rule etc so how can they issue an improvement notice?

They can also issue a prohibition notice but that can only to be used if there is “an activity or activities [that]… will involve a risk of serious personal injury, “. Is the risk of getting Covid 19 “a risk of serious injury” taking into account that that unless one of the people, not social distancing has to be carrying the virus and the inspector has no way of knowing if they are carrying the virus and the risk to majority of people from the virus is still low. It’s not Working at Height or even not providing suitable controls in relation to welding fume.

Edited by user 22 April 2020 08:47:24(UTC)  | Reason: words semantics meaning