Risk to Exist

In my last Blog I referred to the need for risk assessment when deciding how best to protect vulnerable people when there is no authoritative specific guidance. I’m sure many who are not health and safety professionals will roll their eyes when they hear the term ‘risk assessment’. This is likely to be the stock answer when advice is sought from a health and safety practitioner. Arinite’s one page may be helpful. Like it or not, risk assessment is the bedrock on which health and safety management systems are based. How come then, when I am conducting audits or assessments, there are so many incomplete, vague and inaccurate risk assessments around? Conducting risk assessments is considered by many to be an unnecessary bureaucratic chore. Many risk assessments that I come across are generic hand-me downs that have been gleaned from other sources and don’t really reflect the hazards and risks in place at the site. Why has this situation come about? Warning, this might be a bit controversial! There is specific legislation that requires employers to conduct ‘assessments of the risks to health and safety of his employees while they are at work’. Principally this is the requirement of Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. What many people miss is the part of the regulation that the assessment is ‘for the purpose of identifying the measures he needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed upon him by or under the relevant statutory provisions’. In other words, to put in control measures so that health and safety regulations are met. When the specific requirement for recording the significant findings of risk assessments was first included in the Management Regulations in 1992 (yes, I was doing the same stuff back then) there was a significant protest from employer groups and representatives. However, it was pointed out that there had always been an implicit requirement to conduct risk assessments under section 2.1 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. How could an employer ensure the safety of their employees if they hadn’t assessed what risks the employees faced? And I’m now doing what turns so many people off Health and Safety management, referring to and quoting legislation! Back to the point. Soon solicitors acting on behalf of claimants were asking for evidence of the risk assessment for the task in which their client had allegedly been injured. And so, I’m generalising here, employers started churning out risk assessments for the most trivial tasks. I recall auditing one crane and fork-lift hire company and asking about their risk assessments. I was shown a large cabinet full of paper documents – there you go. Within this hoard there was a risk assessment for changing a tyre on a bike!! The next stage then was information overload – so many assessments of trivial tasks that information on the significant risks was swamped. The following stage of advice was only the significant risks need be assessed – no one has told this to the claims’ companies apparently. In the care sector the most fastidious risk assessments are made and reviewed regularly and without complaint of those undertaking them. The documents are not actually called risk assessments they are called care or support plans. Why then, can the same fastidiousness not be applied to risks faced by the housekeeper in the laundry handling contaminated bedding? In many cases the homes and schemes that I visit have adequate control measures in place, it is just that the risk assessment documentation doesn’t detail the hazard and the control measures they already have in place. Is it perhaps the that many of the risk assessment processes in use require a score rating for likelihood (of the hazard causing harm) and severity (of the potential injury). Often 5 x 5 or 3 x 3 matrices are used so that the risks can be ranked. The HSE have tried to simplify the risk assessment process and the example risk assessment forms do not bother with using a scoring system. However, if your organisation subscribes to a safety management accreditation scheme you will need to keep doing the maths, including for the ‘residual risks’. I have seen risk assessments manipulated by certain unscrupulous employers to save on costs etc. E.g. the roofing contractor who while replacing the roof of a care home decided that the risk of him falling from the roof with no scaffold or edge protection was 1 – highly unlikely; and that if he did fall from the roof, the severity of his injury would be 1 – minor injury. When training people in risk assessment I try and use practical examples. With a visual aid I display a stairway without any handrail and ask the questions –

• What is the hazard? (the stairway itself, no handrail)
• What is the risk? (someone may trip and fall down the stairway and sustain injury)
• What is the likelihood that someone will fall?
• What is the likely injury to the person that falls?
• Inevitably, the common answer is that someone is certain to fall and kill themselves
• Then I ask how many of the candidates have fallen down (or up) stairs

Warning, another controversial bit I have seen some risk assessment processes (I think even the HSE process at one time) which ask the Risk Assessor, when considering the Severity factor, to consider what the worst injury could be. Taking this to the extreme then, a paper cut leads to sepsis and eventual death. Using the same logic, all Severity ratings would be a fatality! In my opinion, just as my example of the stair fall, the assessment should consider the likely severity of any injury. And so, with the festive season almost upon us. Make sure you have the risk assessment in place for decorating the tree (Hazards – working at height, electricity, sharp objects, chocolate), and for a portly gentleman working on the roof trying to get down the chimney. Contact us If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office 0207 947 9581, or type an enquiry on our contact page. Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment. Our team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple. Kevin Irwin