Risk Assesment

[Benjie]

I've had the email... can you supply a risk assessment! Has anyone actually made one before that I could use? Just thought I would ask first to save me wasting those minutes of my life doing one!

[James]

Chris S has produced some excellent notes on a risk assessment for Punch and Judy, which I believe are still on the main section of this website. Take a look.

However, these are notes towards a risk assessment, which really the client themselves should be producing. In reality they won’t want to do this. A formal risk assessment would look rather different and would detail the activity, the chance of an accident happening, the severity of the accident, who it would affect, and what precautions you have taken to avoid it. However, for most bookers these excellent notes provided will suffice. They'll be filed away and a box will have been ticked.

I regularly get caught up with writing H&S paperwork for my day job, and whilst it is tedious, and often an exercise in box ticking, it is very important. If your booth did blow over and hurt someone and you hadn’t done a risk assessment you’d look rather foolish. More importantly, and this is where so many event organisers go wrong, if you had done a risk assessment, but then chosen to ignore it you’d look even worse.

How many fetes do we go to, where having provided a risk assessment, insurance certificate etc ourselves, there are gazebos and tents that haven’t been tied down properly by the organisers that blow across the field. Or the classic “all vehicles must be off site by 9am”. We get up early to be there on time, but the organisers wife drives her Volvo through your pitch just as your about to start a show?

[Chris]

Actually my opinion is that you do not need to supply a risk assessment. In this I am supported by the Health & Safety Executive. I carry around in the car a laminated sheet on one side is a poster produced by the HSE saying specifically that it is a myth that Punch & Judy requires a written risk assessment. On the back is a letter to The Times from the Chief Exec. of the HSE saying the same thing.

I carry this along with another laminated sheet with information from OFSTED and from the CRB saying it is unnecessary to be CRB checked.


Of course this does not mean that you don't take common sense precautions when erecting your booth.

[Benjie]

Excellent Chris, nice to see some common sense from the HSE.

[Chris]

Actually Benjie I find most of the HSE guidlines, as those of the CRB to generally show common sense. The idiocy generally comes from us, and sometimes from some of those who employ us.
I have just been looking at the website of a fellow children's entertainer and on his home page he proudly and very prominently advertises that he has an enhanced CRB check and that he is fully insured, up to 10 million pounds, against public liability.
So instead of persuading the parents how delightfully he will entertain the little ones, how much excitement and laughter he will generate, he puts in their minds that although there is no record of him being a paedophile apparently his equipment could be dangerous. Actually they'd never thought in such terms, they were just thinking Punch and Judy would be nice for a change, but now there's this niggling doubt, I mean there must be some danger if he needs all that insurance, and come to think of it, there have been a lot of accusations against entertainers in the papers. Perhaps best to stick with pass the parcel and a bouncy castle.

[Ron Rainbow]

I charge £25.00 for a risk assesment but wave the fee in return for their risk assesment to show that I will be safe at their event. More often than not they just forget the whole Idea.

[CvdC]

Coincidently this issue is dealt with humorously in an artical on the Guardian web site
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/12/health-and-safety-eh

At times one finds oneself in a room full of blokes wearing bright yellow and you wonder what it all means. Although I have never bumped into or stood on the toe of someone wearing such a vest; maybe it works.

One of the comments reiterates exactly what Chris has written:

<<H&S law is well intentioned and actually well written, but poor understanding of it and poor management of it has allowed it to become a charter for idleness>>

Idleness or an over zealousness. Although there are people in this world one can only politely call fascists.

[BookEmDanno]

Re Chris's previous entry.

I have banged on here and elsewhere about Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) (formerly CRB) and agents and their apparent misinterpretation of the requirements. I don't know if the latest changes to the law will improve anything.

However, back to the subject, the Queen's Speech laid out plans for the following:-

The Deregulation Bill will introduce measures intended to reduce the burden of excessive regulation on busineses. The proposed measures include exempting from health and safety law those self-employed people whose work activities pose no potential risk of harm to others.

Seems like the law catching up with the actualities. Should the bill be enacted with this provision, the trick will be to get everyone abide by it.

[Chris]

Let me make this clear, what I wrote was not new changes to the law. It was the situation as it has been for years. Ane we don't need a change in the law, it is nothing to do with the law. All the aggravations cannot be blamed on anyone other than ourselves. If we want to invent mythical obstacles and regulations then that's up to us.

[bilbobaglin]

It's probably worth having that poster as a permalink. It can be downloaded in both an English and a Welsh version here... http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/aug08.htm