A year and a quarter into the Health & Safety Executive’s Fee for Intervention Scheme (FFI), its inspectors seem to be taking a hard line in issuing improvement notices. It’s not unusual to receive several of them per visit, and one company had as many as 14 notices.

This means that, not only are employees and perhaps other people being put at risk, but it’s also proving expensive for employers. Under FFI, HSE can charge £124 per hour for the time of the inspectors in identifying material non-compliance with health and safety laws and helping companies to rectify things. The government believes that tax payers should no longer have to foot the bill for dealing with this non-compliance.

Be Prepared on Manual Handling

Manual handling is one of the aspects that often come up on the improvement notices. Adequate training of staff in this area is a legal requirement, and if this is completed and regularly reinforced, a safe environment and safe techniques will prevent the need for improvement notices.

Alistair Bromhead runs excellent manual handling training courses that can be tailored to your circumstances. However, many organisations prefer to invest in training their own trainers for long term savings on the training costs.

Save Money and Make Money

If they attend a City & Guilds Manual Handling Train the Trainer course run over two days by Alistair Bromhead Ltd, they will receive a nationally recognised certificate. The professional manual handling training pack they receive at the end of the course will be invaluable in helping them to prepare and run their own in-house courses.

This City & Guilds Certificate also allows them to register as competent instructors with the National Skills Academy for Materials, Production and Supply. You could even gain revenue by hiring them out to other companies, as well as using them to make sure all your staff keep up to date on the latest developments in manual handling techniques and become adept at using them.