Dallas McMillan's Blog

The Health and Safety Executive has advised that the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 came into force on 6th April 2012, updating previous asbestos regulations to take account of the European Commission's view that the UK had not fully implemented the EU Directive on exposure to asbestos.

In practice the changes are fairly limited. They mean that some types of non-licensed work with asbestos now have additional requirements, i.e. notification of work, medical surveillance and record keeping. By April 2015, all workers/self employed doing notifiable non-licensed work with asbestos must be under health surveillance by a doctor. Workers who are already under health surveillance for licensed work need not have another medical examination for non-licensed work, but medicals for notifiable non-licensed work are not acceptable for those doing licensed work.

All other requirements remain unchanged, including:

• Persons responsible for maintenance of non-domestic premises have a 'duty to manage' the asbestos in them, to protect anyone using or working in the premises from the risks to health that exposure to asbestos causes.
• Before carrying out any building or maintenance work in premises, or on plant or equipment that might contain asbestos, it is necessary to identify where it is and its type and condition; assess the risks, and manage and control these risks.
• The requirements for licensed work remain the same: in the majority of cases, work with asbestos needs to be done by a licensed contractor. This work includes most asbestos removal, all work with sprayed asbestos coatings and asbestos lagging and most work with asbestos insulation and asbestos insulating board.

Contains public sector information published by the Health and Safety Executive and licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0.

A housebuilder has been fined £20,000 after a young boy was seriously injured when some timber roof trusses fell onto him.

The eight year old boy was playing with friends when they got into an unsecured storage area on a construction site near Paisley. The development was nearing completion and the housebuilder, BDW Trading Ltd, had sold some of the finished houses and there were people living in them while work continued on the remaining homes. The young boy and his family had moved into one of these new houses.

As the children were playing in the storage area, some timber roof trusses fell onto the boy, trapping him underneath.

The boy sustained a serous injury to his liver and had abdominal bleeding, and was kept in hospital for eight days. In the months following the incident, he developed a number of anxiety-related symptoms such as nightmares and poor concentration.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the construction site was only partially fenced, and as a result there was a large gap at the side and rear which meant that the site could be easily accessed by members of the public, including children.

The investigation also revealed that the roof trusses had, at some point, been stacked upright which made them unstable and more likely to fall over.

After the hearing, HSE Inspector Gerry McCulloch said:

"BDW Trading Ltd knew that families were living right next to of the construction site, and as such the safety of children should have been a primary consideration.

"If the company had taken the straightforward precaution of fencing off the construction site, the children would not have been able to get into the area and this young lad would not have received potentially life-threatening injuries."