Local Authority Health and Safety Return 2007/2008

(This return relates to the period 1/4/2007 to 31/3/2008)

HSE use only LA Code Number LA type

London Borough Metropolitan District Urban/industrial Suburban Resort/retirement Rural Scottish urban Scottish rural Other type Welsh urban Welsh Rural

Local Authority Name

Charnwood Borough Council

If not sending this form electronically please forward to:

Health & Safety Executive

Corporate Science and Analytical Services Directorate (CoSAS)

4S.3 Redgrave Court

Merton Road

Bootle

By 30 May 2008

Merseyside, L20 7HS

Guidance on filling in the form is attached. Please read it carefully first.

If you need any help completing this form please contact CoSAS on 0151 951 4862/4725 or email:

Once completed, please email the form to .

· If you have the total for a particular question but not the constituent parts, enter just the total.

· If the value of a box is zero then please insert a ‘0’, otherwise leave blank the boxes for which you do not have details.

· If you cannot fill in any aspect of this form, please contact us.

• Once completed this main return, please can you also complete the Fit3 summary table (PART D).

Part A: Summary of local authority activity and resource

1) Number of local authority enforced premises and visits (excluding petroleum licensing visits)

PROACTIVE VISITS / REVISITS / REACTIVE VISITS
Type of premises (examples are included in the guidance) / (a) Total Number of Premises at 31/3/2008 / (b)1 Planned Fit3 Visits / (c)2 Other Planned Visits (based on risk rating) / (d1) Fit3 Revisits / (d2) Other revisits / (e) Visits to Investigate Accidents / (f) Visits following requests for Health & Safety service received by LAs / (g) Other Visits / (h) Total visits (columns b to g) (auto calc’d) / (i) OTHER CONTACTS e.g. mailshots, SAQs3
1. Retail shops / 812 / 60 / 0 / 19 / 0 / 12 / 9 / 0 / 100 / 18
2. Wholesale / 171 / 35 / 0 / 14 / 0 / 9 / 0 / 0 / 58 / 8
3. Offices / 435 / 13 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 2 / 4 / 1 / 20 / 16
4. Catering, restaurants and bars / 516 / 106 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 7 / 5 / 0 / 118 / 255
5. Hotels, camp sites and other short - stay accommodation / 36 / 12 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 13 / 2
6. Residential care homes / 70 / 13 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 13 / 0
7. Leisure and cultural services / 64 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 1 / 0
8. Consumer services / 304 / 22 / 0 / 2 / 0 / 1 / 1 / 2 / 28 / 7
9. Other premises (not classified above) / 41 / 3 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 3 / 1 / 8 / 1
TOTALS / 2449 / 264 / 0 / 36 / 0 / 33 / 22 / 4 / 359 / 307

1 Proactive inspections covering Fit3 topics or other planned visits as part of projects/campaigns or joint initiatives relating to Fit3 topics.

2 Other planned visits and inspections, which do not pick up on Fit3 topics e.g. licensing, legionella

3 SAQs- self assessment quesionnaires

The following notes contain guidance to help complete Question 2 - overleaf

Below are some examples of staff resources and details of how to record this information in the table. This is not an exhaustive list of examples, it is merely intended to demonstrate some of the different types of situations possible in local authorities.

Full-time hours - examples

A Chief Environmental Health Officer/Director of health and safety working full time but who spends only 5% of his/her time on management of health and safety work.

A Principal Environmental Health Officer working full time managing a specialist health and safety team.

A Principal Environmental Health Officer working full time managing a food safety team, who estimates 20% of his/her work involves managing health and safety.

Three EHOs/ TOs working full time in an Environmental Health Department, each spending half their time enforcing health and safety.

Inspectors(1) working full-time hours (include those who spend either all or some of their time enforcing (or managing) health and safety).
Number of inspectors / Percent of time spent on health & safety
1
(full- time PEHO)
1
(full-time CEHO)
1
(full-time PEHO)
3
(3 full-time EHO/TOs) / 100%
(all time on h&s)
5%
(5% of time on h&s)
20%
(20% of time on h&s)
50%
(each spends 50% of time on h&s)

Part-time hours - examples

An EHO / TO working half full time hours in a specialist health and safety team

An EHO / TO working half full time hours in a specialist food safety team, who spends half their time working on health and safety [50% full time and then 50% on health and safety]

An EHO / TO working half full time hours in a specialist food safety team, who covers for 3 months for a colleague on maternity leave from the health and safety section [50% full time 25% on health and safety (1/4 of 1 year)].

Inspectors(1) working part-time hours (include those who spend either all or some of their time enforcing (or managing) health and safety).
Number of inspectors / Percent of full-time hours / Percent of time spent on health & safety
1
(Part-time EHO/TO)
1
(Part-time EHO/TO)
1
(Part-time EHO/TO) / 50%
(1/2 full-time hours)
50%
(1/2 full-time hours)
50%
(1/2 full-time hours) / 100%
(all time on h&s)
50%
(50% of time on h&s)
25%
(3 months h&s cover)

(1) inspectors include all Environmental Health Officers and Technical Officers who are appointed under s19 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and who are authorised to exercise at least some of the powers under: ss 20,21,22 and 25 of HSWA, any health and safety regulation or any other relevant statutory provision.

2a. Staff resources devoted to health and safety enforcement work- as on 31 March 2008

Number of inspectors / Percent of time spent on health & safety
Inspectors(1) working full-time hours
(include those who spend either all or some of their time enforcing (or managing) health and safety and contractors or agency staff with HSWA powers. / 1 / 20
1 / 100
3 / 10
1 / 33
1 / 2
Number of inspectors / Percent of full-time hours / Percent of time spent on health & safety
Inspectors(1) working part-time hours
(include those who spend either all or some of their time enforcing (or managing) health and safety and contractors or agency staff with HSWA powers. / 1 / 50 / 10
1 / 61 / 10
Other staff resources devoted to health and safety work
(staff with no HSWA powers e.g. management, admin support, agency staff, consultants, training providers). / Number of staff / Percent of full-time hours / Percent of time spent on health & safety
Admin / 1 / 100 / 10
1 / 72 / 15
1 / 93 / 15

(1) inspectors include all Environmental Health Officers and Technical Officers, plus any contractors or agency staff, who are appointed under s19 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and who are authorised to exercise at least some of the powers under: ss 20,21,22 and 25 of HSWA, any health and safety regulation or any other relevant statutory provision.

2b) In 2007/08, did you have any vacancies (in excess of 3 months) that were not covered by other means e.g. agency staff, contractors?

Yes No

2c) If yes, how many full-time equivalent posts were vacant during 2007/08? 2

Part B: Enforcement action

3. Number of enforcement actions in 2007/08

Type of premises / (a)
Informal notices / (b)
Improvement
notices / (c)
Deferred prohibition notices / (d)
Immediate prohibition notices / (e)
Formal cautions / cases reported to the Procurator Fiscal (1)
1. Retail shops / 42 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
2. Wholesale shops, warehouses and fuel storage depots / 34 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
3. Offices / 12 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
4. Catering, restaurants and bars / 20 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1
5. Hotels, camp sites and other short-stay accommodation / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
6. Residential care homes / 3 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
7. Leisure and cultural services / 4 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
8. Consumer services / 16 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
9. Other premises (not classified above) / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0
TOTALS / 132 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1

(1) Number of formal cautions in England & Wales OR number of cases reported to the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland.

Part C: Further detail on local authority activity and resource

4. LA activity

Please provide as much information as possible about your LA's activities during the last year in response to each of the following questions - attaching additional sheets as necessary. This information informs HELA/ LAU of the work that your LA is involved in and will provide the basis for the Partnership Report.

4a) When was the last time the LA underwent any inter-authority audits/benchmarking of the management of your health and safety activities?

We were scheduled to undertake interauthority auditing in 06/07 but we were advised as a County Group to leave this until the revised guidance was received. Once the revised section 18 Guidance has been received then as a Health and Safety Liaison Group we will devise a suitable timetable to carry out inter authority aquditing as a priority. In the meantime as a health and safety liaison group we carry out benchmarking activities annually.

If you have used the Section 18 Performance Indicator (outlined in LAC 23/20) to measure your ‘compliance’ during an audit, what score did you achieve?

n/a

Has the audit report/action plan been sent to LAU? Yes No

4b) Following on from question 2 (staff resource), if possible, please estimate the FTE inspector resource spent on the following activities (either as an FTE number OR as a percentage of overall FTE resource devoted to health and safety work).

Category / FTE (numbers) / FTE (%)
Partnership working / joint initiatives / campaigns / SHADs (with HSE, other LAs etc.) / 0.5
Topic inspections / 0.7
Training & development / 0.1
Prosecutions / 0.15
Other interventions / general enforcement [e.g. LAPS, LOPP SHADs] / 0.03
Health and Safety management / 0.3

4c) Has the LA produced and made available an annual health and safety service plan? Yes No

[this could be as part of a wider service delivery/business plan for the department]


4d) Please give details of projects, initiatives and activity relating to the HSC Strategy to 2010 and beyond, for example: details of partnership working/initiatives, engaging stakeholders (e.g. Safety and Health Awareness Days-SHADs), topic inspection, etc. (please include project title, objectives, target audience and any evaluation).

Topic based inspections were still carried out of those businesses scheduled for a visit in 2007/08 which were rated A - B4 (covering workplace transport, musculoskeletal disorders, slips, trips and falls, work at height, stress and the duty to manage asbestos where relevant). We achieved 90% of our scheduled proactive inspections.
The annual 12 page newsletter was distributed to all businesses for which we are the enforcing authority for health and safety providing details of all current Fit3 campaigns etc. The newsletter has not been recorded as contact in table 1a.
The Charnwood Borough Council Health and Safety Handbook has been revised and reprinted and an online self assessment questionnaire is now available on our website.
With the assistance of the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) we carried out noise assessments of employees exposure to noise at three entertainment venues (A nightclub, music pub and social club). All three venues were assessed as having potential problems in complying with the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 from 6th April 2008, however practical recommendations were made on how it could be achieved. 255 other venues in the borough were identified within the borough as requiring further information on this issue, therefore a letter, noise leaflet, questionnaire and Charnwood Borough Council health and safety handbook were sent out in March 2008. Unfortunately last minute guidance from LACORS advised us not to promote the website "Sound Advice" to later this year as there is a delay in it going live, so our campaign approach had to be revised, however the work of raising awareness and assisting businesses in complying with the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 will continue into 2008/09.
Moving Goods Safely 3 (Falls from Vehicles) / Better Backs - 10 Visits to warehouse type businesses were selected from the scheduled inspections to concentrate on the Moving Goods Safely 3 and Better Backs Campaign in the Autumn of 2007.
We continued the work of the Midlands project of Builders Merchants and carried out visits to our 5 builders merchants (Jewsons, Buildbase, Wolsely Group, and Travis Perkins etc.) to assess how the action plans developed from the earlier campaign had been put into place and reported back the required information.
Dermatitis in catering was discussed and information left on 116 routine food hygiene inspections to raise awareness of this issue.
Charnwood Borough Council have taken two health and safety prosecutions in 2007/08 both involving accidents that occurred to young workers in the catering business, which has led to the local campaign in 2008/09 to raise awareness of employers duties to young workers on all scheduled inspections for both health and safety and food hygiene purposes.
A Health Protection Officer was appointed to lead in 'Smokefree' issues and enforcement and their activity is not included in this return. However an assessment of compliance with smokefree requirements was carried out on all scheduled health and safety and food hygiene inspections by inspectors of the Commercial Group.

4e) Are there any particular enforcement issues where you have identified a need for better or further guidance?