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By incorporating the four essential principles – Plan, Do, Check, Act – into your safety management system, you can reduce potentially fatal accidents and expensive costs.

Plan, Do, Check and Act Now to Manage Driving for Work Plan

• Start by consulting workers and carrying out a risk assessment which considers: the vehicles, journeys and any drivers who might increase your overall level of risk.
• From this, identify any priorities for action and keep a record of your findings. Plan for driver emergencies, such as vehicle breakdowns, bad weather, etc.
• Develop a policy on how your company will manage road risk and ensure it is communicated to your workers.

Do

• Consider drivers’ attitudes and competence on recruitment by asking about their driving history and any penalty points they may have.
• Ask to see their original driver’s licence at least annually and keep a copy on file. Ensure they meet the DVLA’s medical fitness standard.
• Consider further driver training, particularly if you employ younger drivers and workers who drive for long distances.
• Make sure vehicles are right for the job and that they are maintained and serviced regularly. Where vehicles are owned by employees, request copies of MOT certificates and maintenance logs and evidence of tax and motor insurance, which includes business use.
• Ensure drivers plan their journeys, following the safest route, and plan breaks from driving at least every two hours. If a journey is excessively long, it’s safer to allow your workers to stay overnight.
• Consider using public transport as this may allow employees to carry on working, e.g. using a laptop when travelling by train.

Check

• Check drivers’ licences to see if drivers are entitled to drive the class of vehicle to be driven.
• Ensure all accidents and near misses are reported, recorded and investigated to monitor trends.
• Develop daily and weekly vehicle safety check lists and ensure they are completed.

Act

• Review your progress periodically to identify if you need to take further steps to manage driver safety and develop an action plan for improvement.
• Remember to share any lessons learned from experience with your workforce to promote safer driving.

Manage your driving activities now if you want to avoid criminal convictions, financial penalties, negative publicity and serious accidents.

Contractors are at particular risk as they may be strangers to your business and thus unfamiliar with your organisation’s policies, procedures, rules, hazards and risks. Even contractors who regularly visit your premises need reminding of their joint health and safety responsibilities.

Top Tips for Managing Contractors

1. Choose contractors who are competent to do the work, e.g. by checking evidence of competence. Look at risk assessments and method statements, decide whether sub-contracting is acceptable and if so, how safety will be ensured.
2. Plan the work and consider eliminating or reducing risks to health and safety, ensure the precautions needed are understood and the job is discussed with the contractor. The aim of planning should be to ensure the work is carried out safely without putting contractors or your own employees’ safety at risk.
3. Manage contractors while they are carrying out work. Check any safety certificates in relation to certain machinery, e.g. six- or 12-monthly checks for lifting equipment. Ensure site rules are being followed, the job is being done safely and when work is completed, the site is left in a safe condition. Give workplace-specific inductions, highlight the known hazards, make sure that contractors sign in and out and name a person as a point of contact to liaise with, report problems and answer any queries.
4. Review the contractor once the work is completed to decide whether your system for managing contractors should be revised in the light of experience. This will include consideration of how effective your planning was, how the contractor performed, how effective the communication, supervision/monitoring systems worked or whether any improvements are needed to manage contractors in future.
5. Ensure those with responsibilities for managing/working with contractors have enough knowledge, skills and experience (i.e. competence) to carry out their responsibilities effectively. This will involve providing training and information on the hazards and precautions for the work undertaken.
6. Consider how you will deal with contracting firms or their individual employees who fail to work in a safe manner (e.g. removal from approved lists, loss of contract, financial penalties). This information should be made available to contractors.

Ensure that contractors are fully integrated into your company’s health and safety management system,  avoiding costly prosecutions.

Contact us if you require information and assistance.

The safety of people occupying premises is an employer’s duty and is not the responsibility of the Fire and Rescue Service. For people who require assistance, the PEEP must provide the necessary information to enable them and anyone providing assistance, to escape from a building to a place of relative safety.

Advice for writing a PEEP

1. Discuss with the employee what help they need (not all disabled people require help) and identify the persons who will provide assistance and make sure everyone knows their part. Ideally, there should be more than one, to cover for absences. Arrange for staff to receive training, if necessary, e.g. use of an evacuation chair or disability escape etiquette training.
2. Write up the plan in conjunction with both parties. If you don’t feel confident the PEEP will always work, then you must make alternative working arrangements, e.g. relocate the disabled employee to the ground floor. Disabled people who have a PEEP should not be left to work alone. Wherever possible, PEEPs should be written for both fast and slow-moving people. However, where the person may need to rest or they feel threatened by people behind them, it may be appropriate to design a plan that allows for this, e.g. resting in refuges provided along the route.
3. Review the PEEP at least annually and when something changes, e.g. the disabled worker moves to another floor or building.
4. It isn’t practical to write a bespoke PEEP for every visitor or casual user of the building, so you should develop standard plans instead. By assessing the difficulty in evacuating the premises and the types of evacuation that can be provided, it will be easier to address needs and a system of standard plans may be used. A standard PEEP can be held at reception and may be advertised and offered to visitors as part of your signing-in procedures.

Where an employer does not make provision for safe evacuation arrangements for disabled people from their premises, this is likely to constitute a failure to comply with the requirements of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRO 2005) and may also be considered to be discrimination under the Disability Discrimination Act.

Contact us should you require advice.

Health and safety legislation update: April 2014  

This health and safety legislation update looks at the changes which came into force this month and which are expected in the coming year, as well as providing further information and resources that will help you prepare for these changes.

The timetable of changes includes:

Health and safety law poster
Employers have a legal duty under the Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations 1989 to display the approved poster in a prominent position. When the new version of the poster was published in 2009, employers were given a five year transition period to transfer to the new poster. Therefore from April 2014, the new (2009) version must be displayed

The Health and Safety (Miscellaneous Repeals and Revocations) Regulations 2014
Amendment to the Factories Act 1961 and Offices, Shops & Railways Premises Act 1963 and the revocation of a further 10 regulations associate with the Acts.

Later in 2014

The Deregulation Act 2014
The Deregulation Bill is currently making its way through parliament and the resultant Deregulation Act 2014 should come into force, later in 2014, possibly in October.

Revision of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations and Approved Code of Practice
A radical overhaul of the CDM regulations is being consulted on with respondents given until 6 June 2014 to comment on the proposals. The planned changes would align the regulations with the minimum requirements of the Temporary & Mobile Construction Sites (TMCS) Directive. Industry specialists will be encouraged to develop sector specific guidance.

If you require advice about any of the regulations, please contact us!

In any business, some members of staff will me more at risk from violence, crime and abuse.

Here are five key questions to determine where the risks lie within your organisation:

• Do your employees carry out any tasks that could put them at risk? For example – Do they deal with cash or carry expensive gadgets?
• Could the location where your employees work put them at risk? For example – Do they work in remote locations or high crime areas? Are they in frontline positions, such as on reception, alone for all or part of the day?
• Does someone in the organisation know where they are and who they are with at all times – and if they don’t return to the office/respond to your calls/arrive at an appointment when expected, does their manager/colleagues know what action to take?
• Have any staff who may have to deal with violence and aggression had sufficient training in how to defuse it or contain it until they can either exit the situation or help can get to them?
• Is there a suitable written personal safety policy in place within the organisation, which specifies identified risks to staff and how they are to be managed? And do the managers and staff know about it?

Contact us if you would like assistance…