Health & Safety News

Are Your Risk assessments up to date?

Do you have sufficient safeguards in place?

Following The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) recent prosecution of a fence making company for an incident in which a worker lost the index finger of their right hand whilst using an unguarded circular saw, the  HSE are warning employers to ensure that they have assessed the risks posed by workplace machinery and to ensure that they have adequate safeguards in place.

The HSE investigation found that the company had failed to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the machine, these assessments should have identified the need for guarding. and that adequate training should also have been given for the operation of the circular saw.

Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act covers the General duties of employers to their employees and states

“It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.”

This includes

Section 2(2)

“ (a) the provision and maintenance of plant and systems of work that are,

so far as is reasonably practicable, safe and without risks to health;” and

“(c) the provision of such information, instruction, training and supervision as is  necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of his employees;”

However as this particular incident involved an agency worker this represented a breach of Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 which states: "It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety"