Under the Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) must make a charge for its time and expenses in discovering breaches of relevant laws. This is called a Fee for Intervention (FFI), and can include an hourly rate of £124 to be levied on organisations found to be seriously non-compliant. Where a breach is considered to be not material, even if HSE works with an entity to remedy a minor problem, FFI is not applied and no charge is made.
Manual Handling is Always Scrutinised
Inspectors will always be vigilant where manual handling takes place and will want to know about staff training in this area. Training should not be delayed, but when you have a trickling staff turnover, it is difficult to keep arranging training for newcomers. If you have in-house trainers it makes things easier and keeps the training costs down.
Benefits of a Nationally Recognised Trainer Certificate
If your trainers have the City & Guilds Manual Handling Train the Trainer Certificate, HSE inspectors will know that they are competent to recognise and respond to training needs in the field of manual handling. Alistair Bromhead Ltd. delivers this certificate course over two days, providing all the technical knowledge, training skills and course material needed to design, develop and deliver effective manual handling training.
During the course, as they look at risk assessment, your trainers may even come up with ideas about improvements to your work environment and the way items are stored to make keeping and moving them even safer. A small investment in training your own trainers could keep the HSE inspectors happy, with no need for FFI. It could also mean a happier and healthier workforce and make big future savings on productivity and the cost of compensation for injured staff.
The full course outline of the C&G Manual Handling course is available here.