Health and safety regulations apply to the handling of people as well as inanimate objects. When lifting and moving people, you need to be careful of their safety as well as that of those doing the moving. Handling people in operating theatres adds extra hazards to...
Set out below are the questions most often asked of Alastair Bromhead and his trainers by people who haven’t completed one of their training courses. What should be taken into consideration when assessing manual handling risks? Around 40 factors can contribute...
An employee of a major high street bank recently received £19,000 in compensation for a back injury. The employee had been working for the bank for two years and during that time, her work involved lifting bags of heavy coins. Her back injury was so severe that she...
The importance of good training in the manual handling of people cannot be emphasised enough. Recent figures issued by the Health and Safety Executive indicate that, in the year 2010/11, 12% of all reported workplace manual handling injuries involved medical or care...
According to the Labour Force Survey carried out each quarter by the Office of National Statistics, there are around 60,000 manual handling injuries per year in UK workplaces, although reports from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) indicate that these are not...
Accidents due to manual handling rarely cause death, but it can happen. In the financial year 2010/11 a man was killed by falling from a ladder when he was carrying a load. He was a sub-contractor on a building site, but could just as easily have been an employee. It...
The recently published Manual Handling Assessment Chart leaflet, known as the MAC Tool, is designed to help businesses produce the risk assessments for manual handling tasks required by legislation. It was published as part of the Health and Safety Executives...
A diagram included in the Health and Safety Executives official guidance to the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 (see below) has given rise to misunderstandings about weight limits in manual handling. Because of this diagram, and the prevalence of building...
Under The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, all businesses employing more than five people are obliged to have a documented Health and Safety Policy. All work related incidents or accidents that cause death or major injuries, or result in someone not being fit for...
Health and safety regulation requires work premises with more than one storey to have facilities available for the safe evacuation of all staff, customers and visitors in the event of an emergency. In most circumstances it will not be safe to use a lift so this...
