Hot on the heels of Lord Young’s review, in which he confirms the establishment of an accreditation scheme for health and safety consultants, the HSE has issued more information on how the scheme will work.
The Occupational Safety Consultants Register (OSCR) will go live in January next year and will provide firms with details of consultants who “have met the highest qualification standard of recognised professional bodies, and who are bound by a professional code of conduct that require them to only give advice that is sensible and proportionate”.
As reported previously on shponline, the scheme will initially be run by the HSE, with the support of the professional bodies representing safety consultants across Britain, including IOSH and the CIEH. The scheme will be managed by the professional bodies themselves through a not-for-profit company, with the HSE providing support. A website will be set up where employers can find local advisors with experience relevant to their sector.
Judith Hackitt, the HSE chair, said: “Lord Young quite rightly recognised that businesses find it difficult to know when they need expert safety advice, and where to go to get it. The Occupational Safety Consultants Register will make it easier to identify consultants who meet the highest standards within their professional bodies.
“There are already many very good safety consultants who give sensible advice to employers – the register will help recognise their professional skills, and it also encourages those who do not yet meet these standards to do so. It will help raise the standard of advice available to employers and increase their confidence in the advice they receive.”
Membership is voluntary and, to be eligible to join, individual consultants will need to be either chartered members of IOSH, CIEH or REHIS, or a fellow of the IIRSM. Membership requires a commitment to continuous professional development, a degree-equivalent qualification, two years’ experience, and professional indemnity insurance. Those on the register will be bound by a code of conduct to provide only “sensible and proportionate advice”.
The EEF was particularly pleased that Lord Young had resisted calls to introduce statutory licensing of advisors and consultants, arguing that this “would have imposed unnecessary costs on lower-risk businesses”.
Said the organisation’s head of health and safety, Steve Pointer: “The much tougher voluntary accreditation system is a victory for commons sense over vested interests.”
Asked what difference the new scheme would really make when practitioners can already demonstrate competence via, for example, chartered membership of IOSH and the CIEH, Pointer said: “Previously, if you wanted to find a health and safety consultant, there was no information on the HSE site to say CMIOSH was the thing to ask for, because the Executive wasn’t allowed to recognise membership of any one organisation. This wasn’t very helpful.
“Also, there hasn’t been until now any way to take action against those who give excessive, as opposed to insufficient or incorrect, advice. The new scheme addresses that.”
However, the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) gave the scheme a more cautious welcome, saying it doesn’t yet provide “a complete service sigposting employers towards those who are experienced and qualified beyond the scope of safety risk assessments”.
The BOHS is one of the stakeholder organisations involved in the scheme but at this stage, occupational hygienists and other specialist OSH consultants are not eligible to join. Said David O’Malley, registrar of the BOHS Faculty: “It is a concern that one of the main drivers behind the original impetus for the scheme – the issue of ‘consultant creep’, where consultants give wrong, or misleading advice on areas outside their expertise – will not be addressed, and that the credibility of the scheme risks being undermined until the scope of the specialist disciplines operating in this field has been recognised and incorporated.”
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Does anybody know whether Audtiors will be expected to qualify for the Consultancy Register? I understand that not all auditing is black and white and a certain element of common sense is required, however just using the term Consultant can be somewhat misleading. I think it’s important people know where they stand before they embark on a difficult and intense qualification.
Very good point Kevin. It takes hard work to get to Chartered status and full time work with studying for NEBOSH Dip is not as simple as it sounds. It does make it worth the effort though. I support the OSC Register scheme as it delivers a standard instead of levels, which is managed by the different safety bodies. But you are right, there are several consultants out there with years of experience and much more valuable than a paper / certificated consultant.
Does Lord Youngs ruling only apply to the buisness sector? many times I have attended functions and cringed when I see many H & S breaches of law and common sense, as a qualified SHE advisor would not put up with, when asking the organises of these events who or have you got a H & S advisor i often get the reply yes Fred Bloggs is the man he used to be a fireman or policeman is he qualified?
I have grave reservations about this scheme. All to often these schemes get heavily wrapped up in their own rules and lose sight of the original aim. To qualify you have to jump through an increasingly irrelevant set of hoops and pay large sums of money in approval and registration fees. The first objective of any company, including companies limited by guarantee, is to ensure their own income stream and survival for the benefit of the employees. I fear this one will not prove an exception.
Many valid points & clearly register is not the complete solution. Maybe it is about reducing risk of taking on a consultant with e.g. an organisational as opposed to operational background. Writing a policy OK for a ‘consultant’ with an office background but DSEAR risk requires relevant knowledge & experience.
Experience increases in value proportional to hazard and not all CMIOSH consultants manage risk well enough but big consultancy on register not always better than small specialist guy!
I agree, also having passed all three DIploma exams to be told my Assignment was not upto the mark, even though i had written papers to pass Post grad standard in business, some faceless tit can scrub off a project and make up take it again, a money making scam, thats why people are looking at other routes.
All you end up with is graduates with no real experience but a degree! Example I went to teach a PASMA course the degree qual safety const told them they needed to change light bulbs at 8ft!
I agree John, get a graduate to come and tell me about working at height, I’m IPAF instructor, PASMA Instructor, Spanset Harness Instructor, NCC Scaffold Inspector and BLMA Steps and Ladder Instructor, what gives them the knowledge to tell me how to work at height??
God help you all, I’m glad I made the decision to come to Oz, where we don’t have the old boys network and idiots with degrees and no common sense to tell us what to do!
What exactly is Lord Youngs experience that qualifies him for his current brief? His recent comments on silly mythical examples such as restaurants refusing to have toothpicks on their tables on health and safety grounds, similar to Cameron’s bonkers fairy story about school kids having to wear goggles to play conkers in the school yard. As an H & S professional my experience is that people do what you inspect, not what you expect. One person’s common sense is another’s nonsense.
Why is there a correlation between higher qualifications and sensible advice?
I am worried that a lot of perfectly sound safety advisors, frequently with sector specific knowledge are going to be precluded from work and we will lose what they know.
This is not the full answer to a serious problem with moral and fiscal ramifications for us all.
More thought please, particularly for the “safety man” who does not have CMIOSH and now needs at least two years to achieve that status.
I agree with the concerns below – there are many excellent TechIOSH consultants/advisors why is there not a tiered approach to this and then let it be the Client’s choice as to what level they want to go for – IOSH is in danger of becoming top heavy, just because you have CMIOSH after your name does mean to say that you can apply your knowledge in a practical and pragmatic way there are CMIOSH “boffins” without a practical bone in their body!!
I welcome the introduction of the voluntary register, but where does it put those who are at the Technician level and working towards the Chartered membership, but struggling against an antiquated examination approach by Nebosh to the acheive the Diploma 6?
The current method of marking Diploma 6, looks for only the key works in the marking guides and not an interpretation of the words by individuals completing the exam, thereby reducing the opportunity to gain an appropriate pass mark.
Degree level qualification, 2 years exprience and membership of IOSH only means what it says, it gives no guarrantees that the advice or guidance given will be any better than that provided by a consultant with only the basic NEBOSH certificate. A minimum qualification level and a referral scheme, where consultants could be screened throughout their working lives would provide more of a status and guarrantee that the advice and guidance was good and appropriate
There are alot of decent consutlants who have not reached chartered status. It is a concern that these consultants could possibly lose work.
I assume before this register goes live alteration will be made to the relevant guidance and regulations which set out competency.
If some has a degree, post grad, masters and doctorate related to H&S but has chose not to join one of the bodies selected are they to be classified not competent.
Competence
Will individuals and practices offering services as Construction Design and Management Co-ordinators (CDM-C) – Members of the Association for Project Safety (APS) in construction be considered competent under or be allowed to enrol on the new consultants registration scheme?
Buy that man a pint!
There is too much focus on Chartered Status rather than a suitable balance of experience and qualifications (whether Diploma or NVQ route). Doing the Diploma gave me a framework to work within, working with my colleagues provides the real experience. There is also the issue of how expensive the courses are, without employer support it is totally unrealistic for people to have the opportunity to do the higher level study. We should be judging on competence, not membership of exclusive clubs.
When I started in Health and safety in 1999 ,there was a influx of recently qualified Safety managers that as a result of there own particular failing industries, took the NEBOSH General certificate,
Most of these “H & S Officers” where more obstructive in there rigid stance ,and there “war cry was” do as I say or I will stop the job!
These individuals created the hate and derision encountered since by the majority of workers, sDo not let them set up anothsself serving eletist closed shop!
Well said mate,any jobs for me over there???I have 30 years construction 13 years Health and safety.
A query:
A new register would be based upon chartered status or other such currently available rating of a person’s ability/competence.
Given that existing law places a requirement on an organisation to obtain competent advice, how will this differ when a new register is formed?
At present they use IOSH, IIRM, qualifications, etc and any new register will use the very same. I can’t see it making any difference at all apart from wasting time and money. We had RSP a few years ago, didn’t we?
Very interesting. What does Lord Young consider to be ” a degree-equivalent qualification”?
I am a chartered member of IOSH, have been involved in CPD since I qualified and have professional indemnity insurance. I have always been against the idea of over-playing what needs to be done, especially with SME’s. Is LY now expecting me to get a degree to be allowed to continue practising?
From an interest in design and construction, I find myself pondering the thought of a degree in common sense! But more particularly the idea of the HSE deciding what it is and policing it. My wife’s siblings all went to university (she did not) but she claims she has more common sense than any of them, and her father agreed! Are experts in a narrow field capable of common sense. Is common sense disproportionate to expertise? Perhaps Common Sense is not what it says on the tin.
What could have been a sensible debate is already denigrated by the unnecessary identification of ‘Police’ / ‘Firemen’ in pejorative terms. Does Colin have any evidence to support this or was it merely an unsupported comment from someone who thought it was a policeman or fireman? Snipimg amongts the professions is not going to enhance the standing of H&S. The best way to improve our image is to engage in sensible debate, to learn from one another, and to manage out those who give bad advice.
I am resentful of two unsubstantiated presumptions. Firstly that all “duff” advice comes from people who are not Chartered; secondly that an unchartered member of IOSH is bound to give only duff” advice.
Show me some evidence.
I practice as an independent Advisor in my particular sector of industry and do not stray into areas beyond my competence.
Apparently, my livelihood is to be denied without question or recourse by the minority of IOSH members who have achieved Chartered Member status.
The assumption by Lord Young that only some one with CMIOSH status is capable of giving sensible advice and therefore those without out are incapable of giving it is nothing short of outrageous. I know CMIOSH consultants who are excellent advisors I also know many who are academically gifted but have not got a sensible bone in their body. CMIOSH, Tech IOSH and Affiliate status advisors all have their roles to play and IOSH should be supporting this through their own existing hierarchy system.
There is another more inclusive way to do this. Get the industry to say what a competent H&S consultant needs to know and be able to do, for each specific area.Then get independent third parties to assess and certificate those individuals who want to demonstrate competence. By using the ISO 17024 standard those who are certificated all pass the same assessment regardless of status, I don’t think that all those who are chartered will pass the assessment but I bet a lot of those without it will
The most notorious assessments are made in the public sector for letigious reasons by persons who, because of who their employers are, are most likely to qualify for the accreditation scheme.
I support the idea of a register of ‘competent’ H&S consultants, but the proposed qualifications for membership of this ‘club’ do not preclude the possibility of getting bad advice and definitely exclude excellent, experienced H&S professionals who are not appropriately qualified. Their exclusion will be a loss to industry, particularly SMEs. Who will pick up the cost of either gaining qualifications, or paying higher consultant costs when the few qualified practioners have cornered the market?
The path to chartered status for most safety professionals is well know for being overly academic.Sadly all UK SME’s will now be advised to brunt the cost of this disastrous over rating and listing of the ‘top end Safety professional’ Do all safety officers and advisors not have the right to be listed in alternative category?
I am a charted Forester & a chartered Surveyor, both achieved not through summative assessment but through formative and accredited prior learning. As a respected h&s adviser providing advisor to a specific industry sector I am frequently approached by ‘H&S professionals’ holding Dip 6 or CMIOSH for advice on my sector or worse still, pick up the mess they leave behind them. So where do i fit in to this new register and why can’t I be accredited without taking a high risk expensive exam?
There are many great HSSE people out there who have not joined IOSH – This does not make them any less good at what they do than those who have. Why should they not be able to apply to be registered if they have the same level qualifications and, in a lot of cases more experience than those currently chartered. I have my degree in risk and safety management ,GRAD Membership of IOSH and over 20 years experience in HSSE but I cannot apply to get registered!