Health and safety practitioners and other stakeholders are being urged to take part in the latest round of the Government’s rout of burdensome regulations.
The Red Tape Challenge, which was launched in April, will focus from tomorrow (30 June) on health and safety – one of six sectors under the spotlight. For the next three weeks, the public, businesses and any other interested parties can have their say on how health and safety regulation affects their lives, and suggest laws that can be done away with.
The Government says the comments it receives will provide it with a clear picture of how regulations are perceived and help it decide which regulations should stay, which should change, and which should go entirely.€
The role of CDM-C should be scrapped. Adding F10 paperwork to the construction process has not saved a life or stopped an injury.
The CDM regs have been introduced simply because people were not doing what they should have. Removing the regs will not make everybody sit up and say “Oh lets get our designers to do it right this time or lets check this contractor competence etc.”. It did not happen before the regs and removing them will certainly not encourage people to do what they should after they are gone.
What a wonderful idea it is to remove the rules that keep us safe. I will go along with it on certain conditions. Firstly that ministers responsible for these ideas are the ones informing relatives and loved ones of those who are killed and badly injured to explain how removing this ‘red tape’ is helping businesses make more money (no delegation), and secondly the unfortunates that are crippled and severely injured as a result of this ‘red tape initiative’ are not subjected to mees testing.
The CDM regulations are a good regulation, precise. Nobody follows it correctly, that is the problem.
Spot-on Terry
In my experience, CDM and its entourage of paperwork is rarely, if ever questioned, unless someone wants to score a point, and I include HSE Inspectors in that!
As a regular to site inspections you often hear the phrase health and safety gone mad, to only find that every regulation relevant is being flouted insome way. A lot of the bigger contractors who push and preach are often the biggest culprits for letting things go. If the job is running behind things that are happening often goes unchallenged. Its the fear of being sued that is the forefront of how people percieve health and safety
Crikey! Having read some of the comments on the Red Tape Challenge site, its clear to see that there are some extremely concerning attitudes, and an alarming lack of understanding of various regulations, even from posters who cite IOSH membership in their postings. Its no wonder our profession gets the mickey taken out of it!
To be honest probably the least qualified to comment H & S legislation are the people who will shout loudest during the consultation (ha ha) process. That’s all the idiots who want to put people at risk for profit or expediency.
By the way Andrew I can site a recent death in Cornwall which would have been prevented by the appointment of a CDM-C. The client appointed himself as contractor and had no idea about construction site safety the CDM-C would have identified the incompetence.
“This is a genuine consultation…” Mr Podger, wake up and smell the coffee. This is ‘Red Tape Challenge’ is nothing of the sort! It has been instigated by this Government as a means of deflecting the real issues associated with a recession, which was created by greedy banks and other financial institutions.
Terry, there will always be occassions where you could identify where an incident occurred because of a lack of something. That is why Q4 in the Lofstedt review is pointless. It does not mean it is a good or proprotionate piece of legislation.
The CDM regs are overly bureaucratic, often poor implemented and rarely enforced. They are better than nothing, granted, but still a good example in my opinion of prescriptive regulation which achieves very little as a whole.
For the life of me I cannot understand how the CDM Regs can be a ‘good regulation’ if nobody follows it correctly?!
Good regulations are concise, proportionate, clearly understood, well written and applied consistently – everything the CDM Regs are not.