Health and safety gone mad.

Should we stop Danny Macaskill from riding, big wave riders from surfing, Rodney Mullen from skating or the Nitro Circus team from performing asshatery because it’s dangerous and may result in them or somebody else getting injured?

No of course not. Everybody knows strawmen are nice and soft and unlikely to cause injury to bystanders.

The cretin bloke is a working at height, without a harness/fall arrest system. He is not using tethered tools and there is no exclusion zone beneath him to protect members of the Public should he drop anything or fall (as a guideline it should be twice the size of the height you are working at).

As an advanced climber/tower rescuer IMO he should have been fined a lot more.

Here is a proper healthy and safety gone mad

Ben wants to do his Y 10 work expertise with Harry. But Ben isn’t allowed because Harry isn’t CRB checked. Seems fair enough.

But Harry is Bens dad

Who he lives with. Mother and father still together, no custody issues or anything

That’s not health and safety though, it’s not right, but its not health and safety act.

Firstly CRB no longer exists. It’s DBS now, disclosure & barring service. Secondly the work placement provider needs to risk assess the placement which in your? case has only one appropriate outcome given the info. It’s a non event, challenge them and PM me if you need/want to.

https://www.gov.uk/disclosure-barring-service-check/overview

That window is bloody high in the actual video. On a pissed up night out I climbed half way up to it on some scaffolding before the mind cut through the beer. Glad I didn’t fall from half way!
Surprised that op sees this all the time in Scotland though, is it really that common north of the border?

Secondly the work placement provider needs to risk assess the placement which in your?

Ok it wasn’t health and safety legislation. But it is health and safety. But the placement was not refused because of risk assessments. It was CRB. The change of initials changes nothing

Harry was head of health and Safety for a national building company. Now independent health and safety consultant to the building industry. That’s not relevant but he might have been able to whip up a risk assessment. Or the LEA would have done it for free as he is in County

A CRB/DRB check costs very little or nothing in some circumstances. The LEA as the work placement organiser should have headed this off at the beginning.

Should we stop Danny Macaskill from riding, big wave riders from surfing, Rodney Mullen from skating or the Nitro Circus team from performing asshatery because it’s dangerous and may result in them or somebody else getting injured? Slightly different from the OP, but the same principles apply. Report them and fine them for pushing boundaries and not playing by the rules?

Pushing boundaries and not playing by the rules won’t result in several innocent and unaware pedestrians below being crushed and either crippled, or more likely killed. It’s the centre of a very busy city, not some rock in the middle of nowhere. Only a complete idiot would fail to understand the difference in circumstances and consequences. I know the city very well, and the paths are narrow and, usually, pretty crowded, so this is hopelessly irresponsible.

Interesting how little people understand risk.
I work in a zero accident culture business world. Obviously it’s a desire, but there’s a top led culture of stopping people dying or being injured.
I know which kind of business culture I’d like to work in. It’s probably not the stw knee jerk daily mail it culture world of fat Audi driving desk warriors.

A total separate issue from risk anyone chooses to take elsewhere that affect only them like technical MTBing, mountaineering etc.

Depends if you get stuck on a mountain and you endanger tens of others’ lives scraping you off it.

I work in a zero accident culture business world. Obviously it’s a desire, but there’s a top led culture of stopping people dying or being injured.

I work in a place with a similar place – the CEO stamped down hard on this when she started, citing how much safer the mining industry was than it used to be, and she wanted to translate that into our research organisation. The problem is that in mining, people still blow up big pieces of rock with dynamite, which is an inherently dangerous activity, but they developed methods of reducing the risk as far as possible. In my organisation however, they seem to just try to bar you from doing any activity that might be dangerous to reduce the risk, making it a little hard to actually do any work. But, we get lots of boxes to tick and signs everywhere, so presumably we’re much safer now 🙄

Surprised that op sees this all the time in Scotland though

He probably doesn’t.

Interesting how little people understand risk.
I work in a zero accident culture business world. Obviously it’s a desire, but there’s a top led culture of stopping people dying or being injured.
I know which kind of business culture I’d like to work in. It’s probably not the stw knee jerk daily mail it culture world of fat Audi driving desk warriors.

+1

And in the 90’s having gone from a risk aware UK approach to the just-opening up Iron Curtain it was quite a shock (cement production). And tbh I reckon if we looked back only these +20 years the UK will have moved on further – and quite rightly.

A percentage of our bonus was linked to H&S, so if there were no work-related deaths over the year we got more – does this still occur?

A CRB/DRB check costs very little or nothing in some circumstances. The LEA as the work placement organiser should have headed this off at the beginning.

WOW that’s brilliant

You really think he needed checking. Please explain

Surprised that op sees this all the time in Scotland though, is it really that common north of the border?

Used to see it quite often with the tenements – haven’t seen it for ages, the tenement window cleaners now seem to have mostly gone to very long brushes.

The problem is other people. I climb dangerous stuff, but I mostly do it at night – if I fall off, I won’t hit anyone. It’s fine to risk your own life, not fine to risk others.

WOW that’s brilliant
You really think he needed checking. Please explain

I think we are maybe talking at cross purposes. No I don’t think he poses any risk to his own son. The school/college should have an umbrella risk assessment on work placements that covers working with family members and the need for a DBS check. As the work placement organiser the school/college has a legal requirement to ensure that placement providers are safe and this extends beyond just any convictions etc. 2 things to remember on this point:

1. Window cleaner bloke and his knowledge/attitude towards health & safety – would we consider it a good idea to put a work experience kid with him even if its his own son? Probably not. I’ve assessed work placement providers in the past and I reckon even basic checks on this guy would demonstrate that not only is he totally unsuitable to mentor young people but I’d lay good money on him not carrying the correct insurances etc. In your situation it sounds like this element of the checks would be fine, but they still need doing.
2. I’m sure in your case there’s no need for a DBS check but remember that most cases of abuse are usually carried out by a family member. How else can the organiser be relatively sure that the placement is safe without checking? In your case I’m sure it is totally fine, but I know of cases where fathers, mothers, uncles and cousins etc do have convictions for offences or have been reported for other workplace incidents that would give some cause for concern and no-one else in the family knows about them. As I’m sure you know the DBS evolved from the Soham murders after it was found that several of Ian Huntley’s previous employers had had concerns about him but he left their employment before any criminal investigation could be triggered. Lots of ‘soft’ evidence but Huntley passed a criminal records check before he joined the school. DBS captures all of the convictions and all of the reported concerns about an individual to build up a bigger and better picture of an individual.

Rather than being offended I’d be pleased that the school/college are carrying out their duties properly. It might seem stupid on the surface but there’s actually a very good reason for a DBS check and it places the welfare of the young person at the centre of it. Which can only be a good thing, no?

Seems to be a split in opinion between those who work in construction/building management etc and others which is great, I bet even ten years ago, this split wouldn’t be there.

As a construction project manager, I can categorically state this is idiotic and the book should be thrown at the building manager. People still unfortunately die where I work, it’s rare but they do, they consequences are heartbreaking. Does that man’s family deserve to lose their breadwinner because the building manager took the lowest bid? Should a roofer who employs teenagers cash in hand to paint eaves get away with undercutting his rivals who use scaffolding?(prosecution in Manchester last week, the roofers second H&S prosecution for the same offence).

As for the cost of the fine, if the employers really knew how much it really cosst when someone dies it would help focus minds, for a big outfit you can start at £1m and count upwards.

Risk is consequence x likely hood, in this case both are high and let’s face it, the mitigation is so straightforward as to be a no brainier. H&S culture gets blamed for so much nonsense, banning conkers, hi viz vests in offices etc, 90% of the time it’s either a myth or an excuse, not H&S, the HSE has a myth of the month section on their site.

In construction, we’ve halved the number of families losing a loved one in twenty years, it’s H&S gone mad I tell you!

The culture of work has changed since 1979 – actually Dibnah had a big part of that change since he was one of those demolishing ordinary people’s workplaces, leaving them with the hope of working in a call centre for minimum wage and applying for family credit in order to be able to clothe and feed their children.
As I wrote earlier – I’m constantly surprised by how little people seem to understand risk.

pictonroad

Totally agree.

I’d always had the view that H&S was just an inconvenience until 4 years ago. I was the first 1st Aider to the scene of a contractor who fell from scaffolding around a silo. Approx 25m fall. He had a harness on but not attached. He died on impact. His best mate was the other contractor on the scaffold, when he went over the side he couldn’t hold on to him and he slipped through his fingers.

His employer was fined and the owner of the site. That part of the site was under CDM but the owner was still responsible.

Yossarian wrote “The law is the answer…”

oh dear.

Yossarian wrote “The law is the answer…”
oh dear.

Care to elaborate? The HASAWA one of best drafted acts of parliament out there full stop.

I’m not a fan of excessive legislation and I’m generally indifferent to other people’s rules. However HASAWA genuinely protects workers and MOP from reckless or ignorant employers and the self employed from killing and injuring people.

I’d be interested to read why you think otherwise. Really.

Used to see it quite often with the tenements – haven’t seen it for ages, the tenement window cleaners now seem to have mostly gone to very long brushes.

After hurricane Bawbag a couple of years ago there was a lot of work done on the tenements near me. All the workers I saw above a sensible height had been roped up.

My brother has managed to walk to the loo where he works for the last 20 years.
He now has to follow a line painted on the floor.

I’m familiar with painted walkways, usually from industrial environments. They are very effective at separating pedestrians from fork lift trucks and the like.

It’s a good headline but what are the facts?

Example scenario I might run;

What’s the risk, being crushed by an unbanked vehicle is a severe consequence, then look at the likelyhood, 3 vehicle movements a day, what can I do that is reasonably practicable? Introduce segregated walkways, sounds like a sensible solution.

20 vehicles a day, now I’m starting to think we should introduce a safety barrier. It’s not meant to stop people doing their job, it’s meant to protect people whilst they do their job.

A young man was walking behind a 3t dumper on one of our sites last year, he was crushed against a wall breaking his pelvis and ending his career in 10 seconds.

Of course, this is at work, it all falls apart when you analyse a pavement alongside an A road…

I have to say I think that window cleaner was a complete idiot. A more suitable punishment would have been an ASBO banning him form working at height for a few years, if not a lifetime. He could have dropped a bucket and killed someone’s child quite easily.

Meanwhile back in the (former) USSR where I am working for a company contracted to a British Petroleum company and have a very long list of things that need to be Ok to meet the requirements of an organisation whose home culture is not quite the same as it is where we are trying to do the work…not much progresses very fast as you might imagine…..esp. as corruption is not acceptable….

Anyway, I digress, ah yes, I am here in Ganja,hmmm ahh oh yes anyway I was in the client’s offices the other day in Tbilisi. Lovely part of the world it really is, and they had stickers on the stairways reminding you, and I quote “it is a condition of your employment that you adhere to the stair code” which includes holding on to the rail at all times…..and as there is only a rail on one side I actually witnessed…no joke… 2 people (of Caucasian origins none the less)meeting on the stairs having come from opposite directions and one of them actually walking down the stairs backwards to avoid having to pass and let go of the rail, or even turn round to back down…….

…interesting times….