Health and Safety Executive

It's happening in other sectors.

In the UK, you have the Health and Safety Executive, which will investigate workplaces and there'll be specific workplace regulations around, I think, even around temperatures in the workplace.

There's also local authorities in the UK, which is high city level, which will also inspect workplaces around hygiene and safe work conditions and also around temperature.

But I'm assuming that...

And in Great Britain, it's regulated under the biocidal products regulations, the Great Britain biocidal products regulations.

And that is managed by the Health and Safety Executive.

And in April this year, the HSE, gave a further seven years approval for use as a wood preservative.

Now, the approval is largely for infrastructure applications such as railway sleepers for use on railway lines, not in gardens, transmission poles for power, telecommunications, Wi-Fi supplies.

Are they playing a big part in the market yet, do you think?

Well, this is a condition of approval, of course.

I mean, the Health and Safety Executive did look at alternative preservatives so when you talk about alternatives to creosote we're not talking about man-made alternatives like concrete steel uh wood plastic composites uh or anything like that we're talking about alternatives to wood preservative to creosote yeah yes there are there are some this industry is renowned for its research and development work the major companies invest millions in time, effort and years in producing new wood preservative products and wood protection technologies.

So, yeah, it's something of...

So it covers various other things, but it doesn't cover harassment.

And with harassment, it's in a kind of strange place where any kind of proactive enforcement would fall somewhere between the Health and Safety Executive and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

And the Health and Safety Executive has taken quite a hands-off approach.

It was quite heavily criticised by the Women and Equalities Committee for just not really seeing this as really within its remit.

And so, yeah, it's left broadly to the Equality and Human Rights Committee, who do have certain powers, you know, where if the kind of protective duty isn't being complied with to you know conduct inquiries investigations and so on um but again have been criticized for you know not using them maybe proactively enough being you know not using them on enough different places often um perhaps bigger workplaces which might you know leave people in more in smaller and more informal workplaces behind so um There hasn't been a kind of clear step to address that.

And there was actually an amendment that was introduced.

I do apologise if I pronounce this wrong, but Plaid Cymru, one of their MPs, had tried to bring in an amendment that would have strengthened this in terms of, you know, the duties on the health and safety executive.

And the government, well, you know, sort of Labour MPs said that that wasn't really necessary so it was kind of put to one side it didn't pass and that does seem a bit of a shame and a missed opportunity to really you know say okay we need to have a clearer enforcement approach towards this so you know it's good that people already have the remedies to bring individual claims but it's not quite clear how how consistently this will be enforced.

And first up, members of the public can now request records from farmers about the chemicals they apply to their land, following a landmark legal victory by the conservation charity Wildfish.

In a ruling last week, the First Tier Tribunal confirmed that pesticide users hold pesticide records on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive and that the information should be able to be requested by members of the public.

However, the judgment revealed that HSE does not routinely collect or centrally store these records and may not know who holds them unless it takes steps to obtain the information.

And next up, a consultation on the future of biomethane in Northern Ireland has been launched with ministers seeking views on a national strategy and policy framework for the sector.

He now lives in a care home and requires 24-7 care.

A probe by the Health and Safety Executive found that City Electrical Factors failed to ensure that the lifting operation was properly planned by a competent person, appropriately supervised and carried out in a safe manner.

There was no risk assessment or lift plan, and employees had not been provided with instructions about the lifting operation despite this being a regular activity.

The investigation also found that the load could have been secured to the forklift using pre-existing anchor points.

Let's start with what the regulator says.

The HSE's own COSH guidance states that a good safety data sheet does not substitute for carrying out and recording a COSH risk assessment.

That's not my opinion, that's the Health and Safety Executive.

The data sheet is written by the chemicals supplier under UK REACH and CLP to describe the product.

This is about a serious case involving a fatality in London.

I think it was at Walthamstow bus station where the fatality occurred and basically the Health and Safety Executive prosecuted Transport for London successfully.

I think they're pleading guilty actually to the allegation and were sentenced to a £2 million fine and Where this is potentially relevant to all of you is that the failing of TFL was in relation to the segregation of pedestrians and vehicles and the movement of the vehicle safely around that particular bus station, particularly where a crossing was in the centre of the bus station.

It was almost like a U-shape and the crossing went across TFL.