Legend has it that Margaret Thatcher used to run the country on just four hours sleep a night. The oft-quoted rumour helped define an era of the 1980s when sleep, along with lunch, apparently was for wimps. But now we live in more enlightened times and organisations are waking up …
Breaches to health and safety legislation at three Poundstretcher stores in Newbury, Newhaven and Swindon have resulted in the retail chain being hit with a £1m fine. The chain pleaded guilty to a total of 24 counts of breaching the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 following inspections …
The owner of a block of flats has been handed a £200,000 fine after allowing work on an unsafe site to restart, even though enforcement notices had been served by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told on 30 August that a member of the public …
Figures obtained by the Unite union, via a Freedom of Information request, have revealed that since 2010 there has been a 25% reduction in the number of HSE inspectors. In 2010 there were 1,311 frontline inspectors – by 31 December 2016 that number had reduced to just 980, says the union. Unite …
HAVS is generated from the use of hand-held power tools and is the cause of significant ill health resulting in painful and disabling disorders of the blood vessels, nerves and joints. You have probably heard of Vibration White Finger that affects the circulation in the hand, but there are a …
A solar panel firm has been fined £153,000 after a worker was seriously injured in a fall through a fragile roof light at a private home in Kent. An HSE inspector said that better equipment, training and supervision should have been provided. The 32-year-old worker, from Ashford, fractured his shin …
ALARP is an abbreviation for “as low as reasonably practicable” and stands at the heart of the way health and safety is managed in the UK. Sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act require employers and the self-employed to ensure the health and safety of …
Failure to plan on multi-storey refurbishment put over 100 lives at risk A Company carrying out construction work to convert an eight storey former Ford office block into 384 flats has been prosecuted for safety failings that put many at risk. On the 26 May 2015, HSE was contacted by the Essex County …
Greg Pearson, from Enfield, trading as ‘Pearsons Scaffolding’, was prosecuted by the HSE after the concerns were raised about scaffolding work being carried out on Tavistock Street in central London. HSE visited the site twice and found the incomplete scaffold to be poorly erected and unsafe work practices were …
A Cheshire building contractor, Phillip Affleck, has been fined for serious health breaches and lack of welfare facilities on a Culcheth building site. Trafford Magistrates’ Court heard that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) received a complaint from a member of the public in May 2014 about the …
