Consultation on Workplace Transport Safety Guide, HSG136 – UNISON national response.

UNISON’s response to the informal consultation on the Workplace Transport Safety Guide, HSG136.

This response is on behalf of UNISON nationally, and was produced by UNISON’s Health and Safety Unit in consultation with our National Health and Safety Committee. This response is not confidential.

Address: UNISON, Health and Safety Unit, UNISON Centre, 130 Euston Road, London, NW1 2AY.


Direct: 020 7121 5709

Contact: Vincent Borg

Position: Assistant National Officer for Health and Safety

Tel: 020 7121 5709

Email:

UNISON is Britain's largest public services trade union with more than 1.3 million members. Our members work in the public sector, for private contractors and voluntary sector organisations providing public services. They include frontline staff and managers working full or part-time in local authorities, the NHS, the police service, colleges and schools, the electricity, gas and water industries, transport, waste and recycling, and the voluntary sector.

Overall

UNISON welcomes the opportunity to comment upon this revision, having been forwarded the invite from the TUC. Workplace transport is an important issue for our members across various sectors, including those who work or deliver to waste and recycling sites, work off the public highway at NHS trust and town hall sites, or who use car parks or private access routes to remote utilities for example.

We note that the final publication will include pictures, illustrations, a glossary, a risk assessment checklist, and a sample training record;but that they have not been included in the attached draft. We believe that the risk assessment checklist will be especially useful to employers, particularly SMEs as a recap of the guide and as a summary of some of the main issues that they need to consider when assessing the risks.

Response to the specific questions.

1)  Do you think the information in the revised guidance is easy tounderstand, written in plain English and practical enough to beused in your sector?

UNISON believes that the redraft is easier to understand than its’ predecessor, being shorter, more succinct, and less repetitive.

2)  Is the revised guidance clear on what you need to do to comply with the law?

UNISON believes that the guidance is clear as to what needs to be done to comply with the law, with the exception of certain areas where further detail would be very useful. See the answer to question 6 below.

3)  Does it make clear to the reader that more detailed information is available?

There is currently a mix of hard copy references and web hyperlinks. It would be useful to have a consistent approach throughout the document to avoid the risk of some further resources being ignored just because the reader found the format not user friendly. For example, paragraph 23 on consultation requires a hyperlink to the relevant resource, as does paragraph 28 on contractors. Indeed where possible it would be good to include both hyperlink and hard copy references throughout the document.

4)  Do you find the format of the document clear and logical?

Yes, although there may be further opportunity to edit out by cross referencing, some areas of that may still be repetitive. Presumably the HSE editorial team will take care of this.

5)  Is the new publication an improvement on the previous publication?

UNISON believes that this redraft is more user friendly than the currently published version and as such is more likely to be read and used by its target audience. However, there are some significant omissions that must be re-incorporated – see below in the answer to question 6.

6)  If you could further improve this draft guidance, what would you add, change or take away?

Paragraph 23 on consulting employees rightly mentions that it is a legal requirement. However, it should also mention or at least recap here the positive advantages of consulting employees, as described in the second bullet point to paragraph 16 – employees doing the job or their representatives may notice hazards or risks that might be missed or not understood by others, might explain why certain precautions are not effective or workable, and/or they may suggest good measures of preventing or controlling the risks.

Paragraph 18 under the section on risk assessment must be expanded to cover more on the best practice of recording risk assessments even where there are fewer than five employees. There are several good reasons for an employer to record risk assessments beyond when the law prescribes, including: a reminder of what they did and why, making any future review easier, and as evidence that they have complied with their duty to risk assess.

Paragraph 49 on the design of pedestrian crossings should include the advice that dependent on the width of the road, a traffic island/island refuge may be necessary. This advice is included within the current guide and should be re-instated as sensible and practical guidance.

For the same reason, paragraph 153 on unloading when tipping should include the guidance that dusts once airborne can be explosive, as can refined oil.

The currently publicised version of this guidance makes it clear that the driver or someone in charge of tipping should have the authority to stop the tipping for safety reasons, and should be confident that their employer will support them. This is an important provision and must be included with the proposed revision, at paragraph 155. Tipping is a potentially dangerous operation, and so it is in the drivers and the vehicle owners/employers interest that their representative on site (the driver) is clear about the authority they have to stop tipping if safety reasons require this.

Paragraph 193 of the proposed redraft covers safe sheeting, but as above, compared to the currently published guidance, appears to remove the authority of the driver (or at least the employers support for the driver) who refuses to manually sheet a vehicle where this is the only option on site and there are no precautions against falling. Working at height is an exceptionally dangerous task so the guidance must be re-inserted.

Lastly, under the section on driver information, instruction, and training; paragraph 232 which specifies the areas to be covered makes no mention of possible emergencies and how to deal with them. This seems a sensible precaution and would be expected under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulation.

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