Time to wave this in front of the wrap em in cotton wool brigade.

Curses, wrong forum.

I absolutely hate risk assessments for the very reason that they encourage people to look for hazards that are insignificant compared to the benefits whilst simultaneously disregarding those benefits!

The cotton wool brigade have been allowed to propagate due to misinterpretations of the HS documentation made by over-cautious middle managers trying to cover their asses

I see society doing a disservice to children who don’t learn to identify and assess risk themselves, because it’s all managed for them and they’re removed from genuine risk. So when kids/adults come up against risks they’ve not encountered before they haven’t necessarily got the skills to work out what’s best.

Having said this, this is all probably the result of a few idiots doing things like walking children up scree slopes on school trips.

So, who’s involved…

Robin Sutcliffe, Chair of the Play Safety Forum
CAPT’s Chief Executive Katrina Phillips
Play England
Judith Hackitt, Chair of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
Tim Gill, one of the Forum’s advisors

And I bet pretty much all paid for by my/our taxes.

‘Play England’ – never heard of them before:

http://www.playengland.org.uk/about-us/how-we’re-funded.aspx

here here 💡

The single most depressing thing about the modern world for me is people’s inability to do realistic risk assessments (not just the obnoxious paper variety either – the ones we do in our heads all the time).

People miss out on so much these days……

I am pretty sure schools etc would intuitively be less risk averse if, the potential legal costs of doing so were less.

I absolutely hate risk assessments for the very reason that they encourage people to look for hazards that are insignificant compared to the benefits whilst simultaneously disregarding those benefits!

to be fair, you aren’t doing them right then.

A Risk assessment should be suitable and sufficient for the hazard in involved, insignificant risks should be no more than a one liner within the risk management documentation.

Having seen people with serious long term occupational Ill health to the point of disability and attended and had to undertake accident investigation for industrial fatalities where risk assessment was ignored or not properly communicated it has it’s place.

But the complexity of the assessment has to be proportionate to the risks otherwise it can be seen as a massively awkward and hindering paperwork exercise rather than the useful tool it really is (when applied properly)

I absolutely hate risk assessments

Which is why we (and many others) are now using risk / benefit assessments. We (and many others) are also moving away from stoopid numerical ‘scoring’ of risk.
I personally see risk assessments daily that do not state risk. For example ‘tripping up’ is not a risk. Tripping, and hitting floor hard enough to hurt yourself is a risk.

Indeed, There’s a lot of people out there that don’t know what a risk is even if it came and tripped them up! I’m a big fan of Risk benefit analyses and in the Outdoor education sector, for example, they make much more sense due to the fact that you can’t have adventurous activities without some risk! If you take away the risks, there’s no point to the activity!

I would argue for every business risk / benefit is needed.

Isn’t the reality that the “wrap them in cotton wool brigade” barely exist and have little to no influence. It is just seen as an easy excuse to cover a whole range of reasons that life has changed.

The health and safety executive used to have a mythbusting section on their website, highlighting the utter drivel spouted by the “health and safety gone mad” brigade.