h & s
Health & Safety Matters
Health and Safety is a vital part of the mechanism to protect all members and employees from harm. No one should suffer abuse whilst at work.
It is the POA’s aim and objective to promote awareness in this complex subject and provide useful information on a range of issues which affect our members.
It is vital that local safety representatives and branch officials ensure Governors/Managers comply with current legislation, Prison Service Orders and strive for best practice.
To assist you, you should ensure you have the following documentation:
TUC Hazards at Work Manual
1977 Safety Representatives and Safety Committee Regulations.
The European Health and Safety “Six Pack” containing:
o Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations
o Display Screen Equipment Regulations
o Manual Handling Operations Regulations
o Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations
o Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations
o Workplace, Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations
· 1995 RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences) Regulation
· 2002 Control of Asbestos Regulations
· Health and Safety at Work Act
· COSHH
· Private Sector Consultation with Employees Regulations
Prison Service Orders
· 3801 Health and Safety Policy Statement
· 3802 Exposure to Asbestos
· 3805 Zoonotic Infection
· 3806 Display Screen Equipment
· 3810 Health and Safety Consultation with Staff
· 3845 Blood Borne and Related Communicable Diseases
· PSI 11/02 Accident Reporting
Instructions to Governors
· 35/95 Arrangement for Pregnant Workers
· 102/95 Health and Safety Risk Assessments
· 16/96 Workplace Smoking Policy
· 32/96 First Aid Arrangements
The website is also a good source to obtain information and you can subscribe to TUC “Risks” free of charge and access the Unison website (www.unison.org.uk) or the TUC website (www.tuc.org.uk).
If any branch does not have a health and safety representative, it is important to seek out a volunteer. The POA currently sponsor the TUC Health and Safety Stage 1 and 2 levels. Anyone who is interested in attending these courses can apply, if recommended by the local branch committee. This is a basic requirement. Other courses are available for interested staff.
Good Practice
All members should be aware that health and safety representatives have specific responsibilities for health and safety and that they can call on them for assistance. (Publicise this via a local newsletter or posters)
Ensure that regular dialogue is maintained with all safety representatives, sharing information, advice and progress collective issues.
Ensure all health and safety minutes are available and promulgated to the membership monthly.
Advise the NEC of any local issues which may affect or enhance the safety and welfare of the membership nationally.
Develop working links with external organisations, such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Home Office H&S Inspectors, members of the Health and Safety Consultative Committee, Prison Service, Environmental Health and local Fire Section/Brigade. (All of these can be contacted by telephone and can assist in all matters of health and safety).
Compile a list of all accredited safety representatives and ensure this is available and on regular display for the local membership.
Ensure that health and safety is a standing item on the Governor/POA monthly meeting.
Ensure that all accidents/near misses are investigated and remedial action taken.
Ensure that management make all risk assessments available to staff, reviewed, dated, signed with a master copy of all risk assessments held in a central position.
Ensure that the contingency plans and safe systems of work comply with all relevant legislation, other Prison Service instructions and orders.
Ensure that any change to policy, procedure, staffing levels or regime is risk assessed after adequate and appropriate consultation has taken place.
Finally, this is not an absolute list, it is merely a guide to enable each local branch to support the aims and objectives of the POA, “To Protect and Promote Health and Safety in the Workplace.”
STEVE GOUGH
N E C
Setting Out the POA's Health & Safety
Agenda For 2004 and Beyond
It is well documented that it will always be the aim and objective of this Executive to protect and promote the memberships interests. The Executive aim to achieve part of this by setting out the above.
It is clear that any agenda is subject to change. The Association’s agenda will always depend on current legislation, conference motions and policy decisions by our employers. We therefore intend to constantly review and amend the agenda as necessary.
To achieve our agenda we must recognise the framework and constraints that we will have to work within:
To improve, promote and police the health, welfare and safety of all POA members whilst at work or in any other place where they may be affected because of the work they undertake.
To achieve the aims of the Association’s agenda, the commitment of individuals will be important. We will ensure a support network is in place and all relevant information, minutes and training is made available.
STEVE GOUGH GLYN TRAVIS
N E C Assistant Secretary
Risk Assessment Made Easy
Health and safety, and in particular risk assessment, is something that rank and file members tend to perceive to be a technical subject that they are not personally involved in and is generally somebody else’s responsibility! That is simply not true; every member of this trade union should be involved and aware of the risk assessment process within at least the confines of their own workstations. You know your own workplace, tasks or processes better than anyone else and you have a working knowledge of how it should be done. It is accepted that you may not have the technical knowledge of health and safety legislation to complete a risk assessment process but you the workforce should be involved in the process and know the outcomes.
The first two questions I would ask you to ask yourselves is what do the risk assessments that appertain to my work place say and where are they? If you cannot answer those questions then there is something that is not working as it should. How can you personally work and take responsibility for your actions in a way that promotes and protects your own health and safety and that of the people around you if you don’t know the risks that have been identified on the risk assessment and what the control measures are that should be adopted? The simple answer is you should know and more importantly you should also have input in any areas you have an in-depth working knowledge of or where you believe your input should be sought. Simply put, when the risk assessments are completed or reassessed then your opinion should be sought.
The Prison Service has a legal responsibility to carry out “suitable and sufficient” risk assessments for all areas of the workplace. The legal responsibility is an absolute duty and failure to comply with the requirement is both a criminal and a civil offence. Generally it has to be said that the Prison Service is fairly good at completing the risk assessments. The problems tend to lie in the suitability and sufficiency of the assessments. There is no objective way of testing the suitability and sufficiency, the test is a subjective one based on competence and experience.
The biggest problem with health and safety in general, and in particular risk assessments, is the complexity of the subject and the experience needed to test the suitability and sufficiency of the assessment. This partly is based on the sheer size of the subject matter and the legal standing of health and safety, but parts of health and safety are also sometimes very simple and it does not have to be applied in totality or just by health and safety. People know more about general health and safety than they sometimes realise. Most workers tend to know there is a hazard but cannot tell you why it is a hazard or where it says it is a hazard. Coupled with that is a legal obligation for every employee to look after their own health and safety to the best of their ability. This means you should be involved at your working level in health and safety processes and have a basic awareness which includes risk assessments and the process.
A question that needs to be addressed is what is risk a assessment and what is its function?
A definition of a risk assessment is: -
“A careful examination of what hazards in your workplace could cause harm to people, the potential of any risks identified being realised and whether any control measures are adequate”.
Before we continue we should clarify what is meant by some generically used health and safety terminology, the jargon that is used but appears to have no real meaning: -
1-Hazard = anything that could cause harm
2-Risk = the likelihood that someone will be harmed by a hazard
3-Control measures = actions or steps taken to prevent hazards causing harm
What the completion of risk assessments means within the workplace for you is extremely important. A risk assessment should be compiled for every task, procedure and place within your establishment to highlight the hazards and the potential for the hazards becoming a risk. The likelihood of the hazard turning into a risk and occurring is the first important issue. The control measures that could or should be used to lessen or remove the likelihood is the essence of the assessment as far as the reader is concerned. You should be able to view the risk assessment and see the significant hazards and the control measures in place so that the risk is as small as is possible. By knowing these issues you can act in the appropriate manner and make use of the control measures that have been identified. In reality the control measures may not be as clear as might be thought as they may be anything from wearing rubber gloves to standing in a certain position when escorting a vehicle. The risk assessment will make clear exactly what should be used or done as a control measure.
When a risk assessment is completed it should follow a logical sequence to attain the required outcome. The sequence should follow these simple five steps. First it should look for any hazards that are present and outline them specifically. Secondly anyone who has the potential to be harmed by the hazard should be clearly identified. Thirdly the risks should be evaluated and a decision taken and recorded as to whether the precautions that are present, if any, are adequate and whether more control measures are needed. Fourthly all information and evaluations should be clearly set out and recorded. Lastly the assessments should be regularly reviewed and amended as necessary with this information also recorded. The above process is the standard sequence and should be followed for all risk assessments.
Risk assessments should include the potential of violence to staff, which for a lot of our members is very important, and if the risk of violence is high then a specific risk assessment should be completed on the issue of violence. The control measure for violence will have to be identified within the assessment. I would ask again a question? How can the above be done in your area without the input of you; again the answer is, it cannot and should not.
On a practical level, what should you do? The first thing is simply contact your Health and Safety Officer and ask to see the risk assessments for whatever area you feel is applicable to you. If you don’t for any reason agree with the assessment then you can do something proactively, confirm whether you fears are justified and whether steps should be taken to correct the mistake.
The first thing you should do is consult your local health and safety representative for advice. If for any reason you are not sure who your health and safety representative is then contact a member of the local committee who will be able to give you the information. There may well be a legal or procedural reason why the assessment is like it is, but there may well not be. Remember you will only have a few health and safety representatives on site. They simply cannot know everything and be everywhere. They need your help to police health and safety. They need you to tell them what is going on so they can rectify any potential mistakes. Do not be afraid to ask and remember if management ever try to convince you not to ask then there is more than likely a reason why you should.
If you believe that there are some problems then your health and safety representative can complete a work place inspection, which is the health and safety representative’s equivalent to a risk assessment, but it is not a legal requirement. Their inspection can justify the assessment’s conclusion via their submissions, the relevant legislation and also your working knowledge of the area. Armed with their inspection they can approach management and take up the issue. They also have access to the HSE, which is the Health and Safety Executive, who can criminally prosecute the employer or take action against them in other forms. They also, through the union, can take out a possible civil action. The National Executive Committee also takes on issues raised by local committees at regional and national level where that is appropriate.
All the above can and will aid in your workplace being a safer working environment. We can say this because the risk assessment can give advice and guidance on the assessed risk. It can ensure the use of protective equipment, health surveillance and appropriate use of staff. All of these are important not only for the Service but for you. I must state again that if you don’t know the results of the assessment you could be putting yourself in danger. Another important result of a risk assessment is that it will give a marking of risk. What that means for you is you will know the risk applicable to what you are doing and so be aware of the potential danger and be able to act appropriately.
An area that the Prison Service can be ignorant about is the marking of the risk on the assessment. Some managers do believe that to have a high marking which is a high risk is bad, and so will manipulate a low rating. This is wrong, sometimes within the job we do there are risks associated with it and some will be high. As long as the establishment has acted on the assessment and provided all they can to ensure safety, then a high rating is acceptable. Not only is it acceptable but it is necessary so people can be aware of risks they are working within. It is disingenuous and dangerous for any employer to deliberately manipulate the result of a risk assessment and underrate a risk just due to ignorance.
I hope I have given as concise an overview as is allowable in a few words on this important subject and always remember that if you are in doubt contact your local committee or health and safety representative who will be able to help.
Steve Gough, M.A.
N E C
Fire Safety, Is Enough Done?
How many of you or someone you work with have had to take part in emergency procedures due to a fire? How many of you or someone you know, been involved in a collective disturbance where a fire or fires have been set? The statistics would suggest that if you have answered no to either or both of those questions then you probably have not been working operationally in a penal establishment for very long. The Prison Service alone, excluding Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Special Hospitals and the Private sector have in excess of 700 reported fires a year, and I stress the word reported, as I do not believe it is unreasonable to suggest the actual figure may be higher. That figure in relation to the Country as a whole is far in excess proportionately than most of society will be ever expect to be exposed to. Hence it would not be an unjustifiable claim to suggest that most people at some time within their career will have to face a fire emergency of some description. When researching this article I asked myself how many fires I had been involved in, and the simple fact was I knew it was in excess of five, but could not absolutely be certain of the exact number. The reason is that the day-to-day threat of fire has become an excepted hazard of prison life; we now treat the whole issue very casually. In light of the potential of that exposure, how many of you can say you are up to date in your fire training, or even that you are fully aware of all different types of fire extinguishers? The Prison Service in the fire audit for year ending April 2003 was only 8% compliant for fire training, I would suggest that that figure is wholly unacceptable and possibly even reflects gratuitous negligence.
The employer within the sphere of Health and Safety legislation, and in particular fire legislation has certain legal responsibilities that they have to fulfil. For this article we are specifically interested in the general responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at work regulations 1999. I will not touch on any specific fire legislation. The employer must risk assess the potential of fire within the working environment. A generic assessment for your establishment as a whole would not be acceptable; the assessment has to look at the sources, both human and physical, the location, logistics, and many other elements. The safe systems of work you would be expected to follow would naturally flow from them. With those assessments and safe systems of work in place the emergency procedures have be in place, drawing on those assessments and the external factors, such as the fire brigade ability to deal with the potential being realised. These come under the contingency plans.
As a Health and Safety advisor to the POA, what would I expect the employer to have looked at? The first and fundamentally the most important is prevention, to minimise the potential being realised in the first instance. Within a secure setting that simply means removing the ability as far as is possible to start a fire I.E. taking away from prisoner’s lighters etc. We all know to implement that on a National level is both politically unacceptable and logistically unpractical, but it can and should be adopted where it can be justified. An example may be segregation units, which have a disproportionately high number of fires in relation to the percentage of population. The second issue that should be tackled is prevention devices such as sprinkler systems and smoke prevention devices. Smoke detection devices are currently being rolled out throughout the service and we wholeheartedly support this process. Sprinkler systems are very effective and in my opinion essential to the future safety of all who work within a secure setting. There is a “but” which is simply the cost. The government will not fund such a vast capital expenditure that would be needed for such a venture, which to me appears to be risk management with a production line ethos at its very worse. People working within the penal setting deserve adequate protection from smoke and fire that a sprinkler system would afford. Harmondsworth is historical proof of that. The POA will continue to pursue that point at all levels.
The philosophy of the Prison service is to save life and not to fight fire, this we rightly agree with but it has to be accepted that during the period of the fire starting and the fire brigade attending, staff will usually have to tackle the fire to some degree, In carrying out their duties. This becomes abundantly clear when the government set reaction times for the fire brigade are examined, which have to be met on 75% of occasions: -
Cat A risk area requires the fire brigade to ensure that two appliances will arrive within 5 minutes and a third within 8 minutes.
Cat B requires one appliance in 5 minutes and one in 8 minutes.
Cat C requires one appliance in 8 to 10 minutes.
Cat D requires one appliance in 20 minutes.
Those times do not include special rural areas, which have specific procedures, but it does show how vital adequate procedures are.
Another area of importance when assessing fire risk is the use of SDBA, short duration breathing apparatus has become the butt of many jokes. The fire audit as cited earlier only gave the Prison Service 38% compliance with SDBA. SDBA is a vital piece of equipment and important to fire safety in the Prison Service. To have staff trained in its use and the equipment accessible is of paramount importance to the POA and we intend to push the Prison Service and any other employer extremely hard too more robustly manage any Governor who does not take the training issue seriously.
We will all still have the abolition of mandatory training freshly imprinted on our minds, but who has considered the auditing effects of the order. For fire safety what it means is that the fire training base line has now gone and will not be audited, would they have even considered that action if compliance had been 90% rather than 8%. Does the Prison Service seriously believe that that is an action a reasonable employer would or should undertake? It is the POA’s belief that enough is enough; it is time to challenge the perception that is now inbred to the culture of the penal system fire safety is important, and we will not allow it to be treated as a second class issue.
I cannot cover all the issues that are inherent within this subject in one article, but I hope I have made you think about your own establishments, the practices you accept and the training you have been afforded which legally the Prison Service have to afford you. We intend to have a Gatelodge issue specifically dedicated to fire and fire safety later this year, where we will look to publicly shame anyone who does not take this subject seriously and challenge the ethos more fully.
Steve Gough
N E C
In the last edition of the Gatelodge I wrote an article outlining a few of the NEC’s concerns regarding fire safety. I am glad to say that article stimulated some good debate and has lead to a number of phone calls to myself and other members of the Executive. I thought for this edition it might be worth discussing short duration breathing apparatus and whether it should or should not be used in the penal system, by you the membership, and what if any are the alternatives.
The first questions we must ask are what is SDBA and what is it used for. This is a disgusting indictment of the Prison Service but there will be some of our members who are reading this article now having never been trained in SDBA and never used it. There are serious flaws in our attempted compliance with the Fire regulations when the above statement can be used to accurately describe our employer’s compliance towards legal standards.
SDBA is a breathing apparatus designed to be used during a fire to save life. It is currently a control measure employed by the Prison Service to help protect the inmates in our care and the staff where necessary. It is not to be donned in order primarily to fight fire but as a life saving aid. Within the confines of any penal institution where people are totally reliant external of themselves on escape, then it has to be an obligation on the appropriate employer to ensure full compliance with any relevant legislation. I would go further and say the minimum required by the legislation should be far below the standards strived for by any good employer. The policy of the Prison Service is SDBA is a current control measure and as such should be used, but as I cited in the last edition of the Gatelodge, only 25% of prisons were fully compliant in the use of SDBA in the last fire audit.
Why should we use SDBA and why is it of benefit to you the membership? The number of fires that the Prison Service has to deal with has risen considerably over the last few years. The Prison Service’s own statistics depicts the following story -
YEAR NUMBER OF FIRES
1998-99 488
1999-00 554
2000-01 566
2001-02 728
2002-03 735
The number of fires that occur within the penal system are proportionately far in excess of that incurred by society generally. As such that does mean that staff have a far greater chance of having to be involved in a fire and need adequate protection to deal with the related hazards. Smoke inhalation is a hazard that cannot be under-estimated with many staff being affected. As the general environment we operate tends to be geographically dense, and structurally enclosed, smoke can spread rapidly and cause serious injury. SDBA does give protection in order to save life and evacuate safely. It can also by its presence reassure staff and give confidence.
There are of course issues to SDBA that can cause some concerns, which would include working time, medical issues, accessibility, limited use, and of course the list goes on. What would be the alternative though if SDBA were to be removed from the Prison Service. In reality there is no viable alternative. Before the introduction of SDBA staff endangered their own health in pursuit of saving life. There may be in the future the ability to access a more simplistic form of breathing apparatus, but as we stand today the current version of breathing apparatus is the viable control measure. The employer has in the past attempted to order staff not to enter a smoke filled area to save life unless SDBA is donned. This was issued in the knowledge that due to lack of training SDBA was not available for use. That is totally unacceptable, not only would the POA consider legal action against the employer if that order were to be resurrected, but also it is socially and professionally repugnant to even suggest that professional penal staff would leave inmates in a life-threatening situation if they believed they could affect a positive outcome. A cynical person may imply that by ordering staff not to enter an area as outlined the employer could technically sit on the fence. If staff entered an area and executed a successful evacuation the employer could or would take the credit, but alternately if the evacuation was not successful the blame could be levelled directly at the staff involved. Obviously the above is merely a subjective opinion, but the result would not change and that is the unacceptable part.
If the need to save life is an accepted responsibility then there needs to be a control measure in place to aid in that response. A generic risk assessment would be completed which would analyse the potential harm that could occur by carrying out the task. There are simplistically two primary aims of the analysis of the potential risk. The first is to attempt to prevent the harm being realised in the first place, and second is to manage the harm caused by the risk being realised. In the circumstances of entering an area where a fire is current for the primary aim of saving life, then smoke inhalation is a real threat. There are other threats but as we are dealing with SDBA, smoke inhalation is the hazard we will concentrate on.
The question that must be asked in relation to smoke inhalation is how do we protect against it. We should to a point attempt to prevent it in some form; this does happen with forced air systems that prevent the spread of smoke and fire retardant materials and other preventative measures. It has to be an accepted fact that however many control measures are incorporated into an establishment it will not eradicate the risk of smoke completely. At that point the use of personal protective equipment will have to be addressed. At this moment in time SDBA is the only control measure available. There are other forms of breathing apparatus currently being trialled that may in the future make SDBA a more simplistic apparatus, but a form of breathing apparatus to aid in saving life is an integral part of our procedures.
The issue of the ultimate use of SDBA must lie in the control of the user. The one overriding factor that cannot be under- estimated is SDBA as a control measure does not necessarily mean it has to be used. This simplistically means that an assessment would need to be carried out to decide if it was safe to enter an area even with SDBA donned. Fire, heat or external factors may mean that it would be unsafe to enter at all. A false sense of security may be a result of SDBA and this cannot be allowed to endanger any person. SDBA does not offer complete protection or dilute the need for other protective equipment, it does though offer adequate protection to a serious and real hazard: SMOKE.
STEVE GOUGH
N E C