Guide toSafety Representatives
Company Name:
Date:
A Safety Representative is appointed:-
- To consult Management about health and safety matters, with a view to the making and maintaining of arrangements which enable them and their fellow employees to co-operate effectively in promoting and developing measures to ensure the health and safety at work of all employees, and to check the effectiveness of such arrangements.
- A Safety Representative may represent an employee in any consultation with an Inspector of the Health and Safety Executive or other Enforcing Authority, and may receive information from Inspectors relevant to the Health and Safety at Work, etc., Act, 1974.
- Certain specified Safety Representatives will attend Safety Committee Meetings in order to represent any of the above functions.
After consulting with Management:
- To investigate potential hazards and dangerous occurrences at their place of work and to examine the cause of accidents there.
- To investigate immediately any complaint relating to a represented employee's health and safety or welfare at work.
- To make representation to Management on matters arising.
- To make representation to Management on general matters affecting the health, safety or welfare of the employees at the workplace they represent.
A Safety Representative is entitled to carry out inspections of the workplace.
In the following circumstances:
- Where there has been a substantial change in conditions of work, or new information has been published by the Health and Safety Commission, or the Health and Safety Executive, relevant to the workplace.
- On the occasion of a report of a notifiable accident or dangerous occurrence, providing it is safe to carry out an investigation at that time.
- By giving the Authority seven days notice in writing if in the previous three months the workplace had not been inspected.
N.B.In Most cases it is in the interests of all parties if joint investigations, inspections etc. are carried out.