Health & Safety

Local businesses receive visits and inspections to check employers are complying with the relevant health, safety and welfare legislation that affects employees, self-employed persons and the general public . We also respond to complaints and serious accidents in the workplace. We have a large number of local premises that we have enforcement responsibility for e.g. shops, offices, day nurseries and warehouses while the Health & Safety Executive enforces health & safety at higher risk premises such as hospitals, nursing homes, schools, council owned premises and manufacturers.

The Basics for Business

In March 2011 the Minister for Employment announced a range of health and safety initiatives recently that were published by the Department for Work and Pensions in 'Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone'. As part of the announcement, which outlined plans that will herald a new start for health and safety regulation, the Health and Safety Executive has launched a new online resource for low risk businesses – particularly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Basics in Business:

• Is aimed at low-risk SME’s but is useful for anyone who requires entry-level information on managing health and safety
• Provides simple guidance on how to manage health and safety in a logical and straightforward way
• Shows businesses the things they must do to achieve a basic level of compliance with their health and safety duties.
• Signposts businesses to more detailed information and advice where necessary
• The site will help businesses to:
• Save time on managing health and safety by using the streamlined guidance and direct links to supporting material; and
• See that in many low risk businesses health and safety can be adequately managed in-house.

Officers will be pointing local SME businesses to access the website during interventions this year.

Safer Workplace, Better Business (SWBB)

Colleagues at Torbay Council have produced a pack for small and medium size businesses to help compliance with the law. 

The pack guides businesses through the legislation that is most likely to be relevant and helps focus on the real risks that really matter in the workplace.  It will help proprietors show that they have assessed all aspects of their business and help them to put in place a plan to eliminate the risks.  The pack also gives businesses examples of some records including incident logs which will help to demonstrate any action that has been taken to comply with the law.

Further assistance and information for specific processes or high-risk activities can be obtained from the website of the Health & Safety Executive www.hse.gov.uk or from this Authority at foodsafety@gedling.gov.uk and our own website.

The SWBB pack is available to download from http://www.torbay.gov.uk/swbbpack.pdf

Risk Assessments

Several pieces of current health and safety legislation require employers and the self-employed to assess the risks created by their business enabling them to identify the measures they need to have in place to comply with the law including:

• Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
• Manual handling Operations Regulations 1992 (as amended)
• Personal protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992
• Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 (as amended)
• Noise at Work Regulations 1989
• Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002
• Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations 2002
• Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002.

Complaints and Accidents

In 2010-11 there were 21 complaints relating to health, safety or welfare matters in workplaces and 52 reported accidents that were brought to the attention of the service.

If I have a complaint or have been involved in a workplace related accident what should I do?

If the complaint or accident relates to a premises within the Borough of Gedling for which we have enforcement responsibility you should contact our Customer Services. Certain categories of accident, including those involving members of the public are by law reportable by the employer.

The HSE website has guidance on the reporting of work related accidents. Employees have the separate responsibility of ensuring their accident is recorded in the 'B1 510 accident book' as a record of the incident.

What we will do

To enable us to investigate a complaint or accident we need to have as much information relating to the matter as possible. To this end the investigating officer will likely want to discuss the complaint with you before visiting the premises. While not all accidents require investigation any investigation carried out may require us to contact another local authority (called a Primary Authority) which has the overall responsibility for a larger business having numerous premises across the country.  Investigations, particularly of serious accidents can therefore take some time to carry out and moreover while we will endeavour to keep a complainant or incident victim updated we cannot get involved in claiming compensation for you. This is a matter between the company involved and the complainant/injured person and you should consult a solicitor for any legal advice.

What action will be taken?

Each complaint or accident investigated has to be dealt with in accordance with the Council's enforcement policy, the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence legislation and the Criminal Law System. This means that some investigations can take a considerable amount of time to complete as an issue may be very complex or lead to other contentious areas. For example contact may need to be be made with sub contractors, site owners, other local authorities, laboratories, solicitors etc. We will keep you informed of progress -however if you feel you have not heard from the investigating officer for some time please feel free to contact them to discuss matters.

Most complaints do not result in statutory proceedings. Sometimes complaints are not pursued, usually due to a lack of evidence, the minor nature of a complaint or regrettably because the complaint is mischievious. 

Some investigations result in warnings or advice being given or the issue of a simple caution. Enforcement action may be taken, but Investigating Officers have to consider disclosure of all the relevant evidence and bear in mind any legal defence that may be available to the business. In some cases it will not be appropriate to take formal action.

Once all the evidence has been collected it will become clear whether it is necessary to advise, warn, caution, or prosecute over a complaint or accident. Should the Investigating Officer consider that prosecution is appropriate for the complaint or accident you will be asked to provide a witness statement and may also be obliged to attend as a witness in court. The Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 will normally require us to disclose your details to the business as part of the legal action.

At the end of the investigation we will contact you either by telephone or in writing to confirm the action taken.