I thought the HSE was to provide safety rulings so that dodgy bosses couldn't put untrained workers on dangerous machines or environments.
I've learned a lot from this forum and thread, I'm quite new to power TS - having had (and then having to modify the fence, mitre slide, and better guard) a cheap one for 5 or so years (cf 40 years of hand sawing). I have taken away from this thread better was to use push sticks and avoid those over the saw ones. I'm still terrified of the thing. In my experience HSE has been transformational in my working life time. They do tend to focus on where the statistics are bad, so attention ebbs and flows depending on where the Riddor statistics go. There is a lot of nonsense reported about the HSE banning stuff which is simply not true, but usually used as an excuse for someone not wanting to do something.
HSE and 1974 H&S at Work Act have transformed working conditions. - Despite us all not liking being told how to go about our business, this is about life and limb.
-Workplace deaths down 90% (99.9% in most industries) in 45 years, injuries down as well.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/history/historical-picture.pdf
There are about 2000 enforcement notice per year - still quite shocking.
-HSE gov grant is £120m per year - to put in perspective its about 1/thousandth (corrected) of the NHS budget or 1/3 day of NHS, its at the prevent end whilst NHS is at the repair end of the chain.
-HSE is primarily about work practice but as others have said it also educates the rest of us.
I have personal experience of when the HSE started to get serous in early 1980's.
As a student in the early 80's our prof summonsed everyone to a lecture on safety, he was an impressive, scary charismatic non-nonsense cockney and he put if bluntly, 'since the act, I'm now personally accountable for safety, its no longer the SOs accountability, therefore you will all wear ppe etc and I will take compliance into consideration when signing off your annual grant renewal forms (we got grants in those days). HSE notices went up and we wore safety specs and two people kept their eyes when the inevitable happened in the chemistry lab. It was clear the HSE could send him to prison. HSE was a serious business.
I've worked in manufacturing for 30 odd years and seen a complete transformation in HSE culture during that time. We used to just pour nasty stuff down the drain, now its carefully packaged and sent for treatment. In our 'work environment' the term accident has largely been replaced by other terms such as incident, largely because the view is all accidents can be prevented, whereas the definition of accidental implies it chance is sole cause. In reality a route cause can be found.
There is a lot of mad and bad HSE excuses banded about, eg cancelling pancake raises due to the HSE. Usually this is risk-averse or lazy management not wanting to engaging in doing stuff properly and drives the HSE executive mad, Judith Hackett has railed against it. In my experience the HSE is aiming to help companies and people do stuff - by doing it safely. ie the potato peeling that works well and manages hazardous work safely.
Back to the forum, please keep giving us good ideas on how to carry out woodwork skillfully and safely. Thanks
