Asbestos was commonly used within machinery, homes and commercial buildings up until 1999 when it was banned. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) states that asbestos kills approximately 5000 workers every year, more than the number of people killed on the road. It can take 15 to 60 years for any symptoms to develop after… Read More
Responsibilities of a first aider Being a first aider involves many important responsibilities, varying from keeping the facility’s first aid kit supplied to providing medical assistance to an injured person. It’s a very important role, requiring initial and frequent refresher training. A first aider may need to provide anything from training assistance, showing people where… Read More
The HSE are launching a new initiative to raise the awareness of construction works to the risks arising from exposure to asbestos. While this is not new, what is of interest is the statistics attached to the campaign and a rising number of companies being prosecuted for material breaches of safety around asbestos, this is… Read More
At SAMS today we read with some amusement the blog from the head of the HSE Judith Hackitt concerning the views of Bear Grylls (Chief Scout) over the refusal of the administrators of an allotment to allow scouts to be allocated one on the basis of health and safety. Mr Grylls felt so strongly about… Read More
Employing the services of a contractor is a little bit like marriage – you don’t really know what you are getting until 12 months later! On many occasions, issues reported by the HSE on where something has gone wrong involve an external contractor. Take for example the recent incident where a construction project had to… Read More
Why on earth would I voluntarily put my company through an audit? Well the answer may surprise. At SAMS we are happy to have had our CHAS registration renewed for 2014 in respect of our CDM services to construction projects. Although some may shudder at the thought of being audited, we have found that being… Read More
We are pleased to announce that SAMS Ltd have just launched a range of e learning courses which may be of interest to you. All courses can be viewed at www.samsltd.co.uk/e-learning and include: UKATA – Asbestos Awareness CIEH – Introduction to Environmental Awareness CIEH – Introduction to First Aid CIEH – Level 1 Food Safety… Read More
SAMS Ltd were interested to note that a company from Scotland was heavily fined for an incident involving a forklift truck following a fatality in 2013 having been fined for an incident in 2011. The comments made following the course was that there was no safe system of work in place and that operators were… Read More
Less than 2 years after the Government made significant cuts to the HSE a small article in the press nearly passed us by at SAMS Ltd. The article stated that the HSE was about to launch a recruiting drive for Inspectors and given the recent round of cuts the question of why this was happening… Read More
Making any change can often be seen as disruptive but at SAMS Ltd we see it more as creating an opportunity to reflect of what is happening and then improving it. At SAMS Ltd this has certainly been the case in respect of our new web site which we have just launched. In particular we… Read More