Local Authority Waste & Recycling Magazine
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15 Annual Guide 2015 | SOURCE TESTING ASSOCIATION Health and safety: emergency planning O ne of the most frequent questions that has been raised at the STA health and safety meetings in recent years has been regarding emergency planning and response in relation to emissions testing. is has often been relating to who has the re sponsibility to manage this and what the test house needs to do. Firstly, as part of the Work at Height Regu- lations, one of the primary tasks is to ensure that all work at height is properly planned and organised, making sure all risks associ ated with the job are fully assessed. A lot of this will focus on minimising the exposure to work at height along with making sure that the correct equipment is used and that this is correctly inspected. However, one additional aspect that must be considered is emergency evacuation and rescue procedures for people working at height. e HSE Work at Height Brief Guide stipulates, as a requirement in law, that: "You must plan for emergencies and rescue, e.g. agree a set procedure for evacuation. Think about foreseeable situations and make sure employees know the emergency procedures. Don't just rely entirely on the emergency services for rescue in your plan." From this it is clear that this plan should be a joint effort between the site and also the teams or personnel working at height. It is also to be noted that procedures will vary between sites depending on a variety of para meters, such as height of work, means of access, duration of task, nature of the site for example. Each site should have an emergency plan which is developed based on actual risks on their site. Companies cannot simply rely on the emergency services without having any other plan. It may be that the emergency services could cope with a rescue from height from a site in some cases; however this should be dis cussed with them to ensure that this is the fact. Fire and rescue have local liaison officers who can be contacted to discuss these issues, and they will be able to advise on what they can do. For example not every area has high line rescue teams and ambulance service heart teams, but these may be located some distance away. is type of information could be key in deciding what action needs to go into a site plan. We canvassed opinion from a few of our member companies to look at the systems they have in place. A few of the companies contacted have their own dedicated onsite rescue teams. As an example we spoke to Andy Eastman, shift manager at Hanson UK where they have proactively developed a system to provide an immediate response to any emergencies in confined spaces or from people who are working from height. Contractors had covered this in the past on their behalf during shut down situations; however following a ยป