Health and Safety for Beginners Forums

"Guidance to help employers, employees and the self-employed understand how to work safely during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government, in consultation with industry, has produced guidance to help ensure workplaces are as safe as possible."


From:Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Published:11 May 2020
Updated:11 May 2020

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-saf ... s-covid-19

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new- ... ck-to-work

WB

Just sat with a coffee having a read

https://www.hse.gov.uk/news/working-saf ... ge-popular

"Talking with your workers about working safely during the coronavirus outbreak (PDF)
By consulting and involving people in steps you are taking to manage the risk of coronavirus in your workplace you can:

explain the changes you are planning to work safely
make sure changes will work and hear their ideas
continue to operate your business safely during the outbreak
You should share the results of your risk assessment with your workforce. If possible, you should consider publishing the results on your website (and the government expects all employers with over 50 workers to do so).

You can find a notice to download, print and display in your workplace to show you have followed this guidance at GOV.UK."


WB

Updated 29 May 2020

Vehicles : Guidance for people who work in or from vehicles, including couriers, mobile workers, lorry drivers, on-site transit and work vehicles, field forces and similar.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-saf ... 9/vehicles


Shops and branches : Guidance for people who work in or run shops, branches, stores or similar environments.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-saf ... d-branches


Construction and other outdoor work : Guidance for people who work in or run outdoor working environments.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-saf ... tdoor-work


Factories, plants and warehouses : Guidance for people who work in or run factories, plants and warehouses.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-saf ... warehouses

WB

I am looking to open up our charity premises post lockdown. I have been pointed by government and others to HSE websites such as here https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-sa ... amples.htm where they often link to the simple Risk Assessment (RA) template https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-sa ... -2019.docx

By their own definitions:

A hazard is “anything that may cause harm; these can be hazards to physical health such as chemicals, electricity, working from ladders……….” and risk is “the chance, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by these and other hazards, together with an indication of how serious the harm could be.” (https://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/controlling-risks.htm)

So the RA should contain some columns for a simple assessment of say high, medium, low for probability and death/major injury/minor injury, with a risk matrix to assess their combined effect i.e. their risk. As their simple “RA” has no such mention it’s not a RA as risks never get mentioned. It should be renamed a Hazard Identification as it only identifies hazards, with columns to input mitigations and actions again each hazard.

Why does our esteemed HSE put out a template that doesn’t do what it is supposed to? It is misleading the public and employers as to what risk is.

My background is Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) in transport industries, but I am retired from all that and am not suggesting QRA is the way to go for a premises.