Tony Carlyon: UK Compliance & Fire Safety

PPE sits right at the bottom of the hierarchy of control for a reason: it protects the person wearing it, but it doesn't remove the hazard itself. That's exactly why a PPE risk assessment gets misunderstood so often. It's not really an assessment of the PPE, it's an assessment of the task, that happens to conclude PPE is needed because nothing higher up the hierarchy removed the risk. Here's how to do it properly, without the jargon. PPE is the last resort, not the first thought Before you get anywhere near deciding what PPE is needed, the question has to be whether the hazard can be removed or reduced another way. Can the task be done differently so the risk isn't there at all? Can the hazard be enclosed or guarded? Can the way people work be changed to reduce exposure? Only once those options are genuinely considered and ruled out (or used alongside PPE, not instead of it) does PPE selection actually start. A risk assessment that jumps straight to "...

Under the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981, every employer in the UK has to make sure there's adequate first aid provision for staff, whatever the size of the business. There's no exemption for being small. What changes with size is how much provision you need, not whether you need any at all. Here's what that actually means in practice for a small business. Start with a first aid needs assessment Before you can say what you need, you're supposed to have worked out what you need, and that means a first aid needs assessment. This doesn't have to be a lengthy document. For most small, low risk workplaces (a typical office, shop, or small service business) it can be a short, common sense look at: The nature of the work and the hazards involved The number of people on site, including visitors where relevant Whether there are any employees with specific health conditions the first aider should know about How spread out the workplace is, and whethe...

Ask most site managers whether they've got a working at height risk assessment and they'll say yes. Ask them whether it actually covers the job being done that day, and the answer gets shakier. Working at height is one of the most heavily regulated areas of construction safety, and it's also one of the most commonly done on autopilot, using a generic assessment that technically ticks a box without addressing what's actually happening 3 metres up a scaffold tower. Here's where working at height risk assessments most often fall short, and what a proper one actually needs to cover. The hierarchy gets skipped The Work at Height Regulations 2005 set out a clear hierarchy: avoid working at height where you can, use equipment to prevent falls where you can't avoid it, and only fall back on equipment that minimises the distance and consequences of a fall as a last resort. A lot of risk assessments jump straight to "operatives will wear a harness" without...

If you've ever had a method statement bounced back by a principal contractor with "not suitable for the works" scrawled across the top, you'll know it's rarely because the site team don't know how to do the job safely. It's because the document didn't say so clearly enough. A method statement isn't there to prove you're careful, it's there to prove it in a way a reviewer who has never seen your site can follow in five minutes flat. Here's what actually gets a method statement through review first time, and what gets it sent back. Start with the sequence, not the hazards The most common mistake is writing a method statement as a list of hazards with controls bolted on, rather than a description of how the work is actually going to happen. A reviewer wants to see the job broken into a logical sequence of steps, in the order they'll happen on site. Something like: Site set up and welfare checks Isolate and permit Erect acces...

 Short answer: you have to report a work-related death, a specified serious injury, or an injury that keeps someone off work for more than 7 days, plus certain diseases and dangerous occurrences, even if nobody actually got hurt. RIDDOR isn't asking you to log every scraped knuckle, it's asking for the incidents serious enough that the Health and Safety Executive needs to know about them. DEATHS Any death resulting from a work-related accident has to be reported, full stop. This excludes suicides, but includes a death that happens up to a year later if it's traceable back to a reportable injury from work. SPECIFIED INJURIES These are the injuries serious enough to report regardless of how long someone's off work: fractures other than to fingers or toes, amputations, permanent loss of sight, crush injuries to the head or torso, serious burns covering more than 10% of the body, scalping that needs hospital treatment, loss of consciousness from a head injury or from asphyx...

 Short answer: they're checking three things, that people can escape a fire safely, that the amenities are adequate for how many people are actually living there, and that you've got the paperwork to prove you've been keeping on top of it. Miss any of the three and it shows immediately. FIRE SAFETY This is usually the first thing checked. Escape routes need to be clear and unobstructed, properly signed, with fire doors in the higher risk areas like kitchens and communal hallways. Fire extinguishers, where required, need to be accessible and show evidence of regular servicing. Smoke alarms on every floor, carbon monoxide detectors in any room with a fuel burning appliance, none of this is optional or something you can catch up on the morning of the visit. ROOM SIZES AND AMENITIES HMOs have legal minimum room sizes, 6.51 square metres for an adult, 4.64 for a child under 10, and inspectors will measure if they're unsure. Shared bathrooms and kitchens have to be genuinely ...