Asbestos Matters - no other matters just Asbestos Matters

If you are breaking health and safety laws, HSE may recover its costs from
you by charging a fee for the time and effort it spends on helping you to put
the matter right, investigating and taking enforcement action.
This is called....Intervention Fees introduced from October 1st 2014.

What is fee for intervention (FFI)?
HSE’s inspectors inspect work activities and investigate incidents and complaints.
If, when visiting your business, they see material breaches of the law, you will have to pay a fee. The fee is based on the amount of time that the inspector has had to spend identifying the breach, helping you to put it right, investigating and taking enforcement action.

Why is FFI being introduced?
HSE and the government believe it is right that businesses that break health and
safety laws should pay for HSE’s time in putting matters right, investigating and
taking enforcement action. Before FFI was introduced, this was paid for from the
public purse. FFI will also encourage businesses to comply in the first place or put matters right quickly when they don’t. It will also discourage businesses who think that they can undercut their competitors by not complying with the law and putting people at risk.

Will FFI apply to me?
If you comply with the law you won’t pay a fee. FFI only applies to work carried out by HSE’s inspectors so if your business is inspected for health and safety by another regulator, such as local authority environmental health officers, it will not apply.

FFI will apply to all businesses and organisations inspected by HSE, except for:
• self-employed people who don’t put people at risk by their work;
• those who are already paying fees to HSE for the work through other
• arrangements; and
• those who deliberately work with certain biological agents

Need to know more?.......check it all out by visiting:

HSE

In this latest series of blogs we would like to tell you about The Health & Safety Executive.
We will look at who they are and what they do to protect you and your employees and of course even members of the public from accidents and ill health.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the national independent watchdog for work-related health, safety and illness. They are an independent regulator and act in the public interest to reduce work-related death and serious injury across Great Britain’s workplaces.

The HSE was formed in 1975 with the remit to undertake the requirements of the Health and Safety Commission and to enforce health and safety legislation in all workplaces, except those regulated by Local Authorities.

The HSE was set up in order to support the Government’s strategic aims and current targets for health and safety at work. Its main aim is to secure the health, safety and welfare of people at work and protect others from risks to health and safety from work activity.

The HSE’s mission is:
“The prevention of death, injury and ill health to those at work and those affected by work activities”

What Powers does The HSE Have?
The HSE can visit any workplace at any time to carry out a health and safety inspection. They can investigate following a report of an injury or a suspected unsafe working practice, which may breach health and safety legislation.

If a HSE inspector considers that health and safety law is being broken, or activities give rise to a serious risk, they can if necessary place upon the employer or indeed the employee the following notices or even prosecute where required......so if you didn’t know just exactly what powers the HSE have read on..

Informal Warning
Where the breach of the law is relatively minor, the inspector may tell the duty holder what he needs to do to comply with the law.

Improvement Notice
Where the breach of the law is more serious, the inspector may issue an improvement notice to tell the duty holder to do something to comply with the law. The notice will say what needs to be done, why, and by when (at least 21 days). The inspector can take further legal action if the notice is not complied with within the specified time period.

Prohibition Notice
Where an activity may or does involve, a risk of serious personal injury (or worse), the inspector may serve a notice prohibiting the activity immediately and not allowing it to be resumed until suitable remedial action has been taken. This may include closing the whole site down.

Prosecution
In some cases the inspector may consider that it is also necessary to initiate a prosecution. Health and safety law gives the courts considerable scope for punishing offenders and deterring others.

The maximum penalty possible under health and safety legislation depends on the offence. For example, a failure to comply with an improvement or prohibition notice, or a court remedy order, carries a fine of up to £20,000, or six months’ imprisonment, or both. Unlimited fines and in some cases imprisonment may be imposed by higher courts.

Recent cases have seen one company fined £160,000 for a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 which led to a worker falling to his death; another company was fined £30,000 for a breach of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 for failure to plan, supervise and carry out lifting safely.

Keep checking back to our blog site.....theres more coming your way about the HSE!

The Asbestos Specialists in another asbestos training industry first today are proud to announce the launch of The Duty to Manage online and face 2 face training courses.

The Duty to Manage Asbestos training course is directed at those who manage non-domestic premises: the people with responsibility for protecting others who work in such premises, or use them in other ways, from the risks to ill health that exposure to asbestos causes.

RoSPA Approved
The e-learning (on-line) course

The Asbestos Specialists can offer you the opportunity to undertake the Duty to Manage Asbestos training course through two routes; traditional face-to-face training or our industry leading online version. Both courses are examination based and are fully certificated. The course will assist building owners to comply with The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and ACoP L143 (second edition). This course is suitable for delegates who already have attained an approved asbestos awareness qualification.

Face-to-Face Option
Available as both in-house and at locations throughout the UK. The in-house option can accommodate up to a maximum of 15 delegates. It follows all relevant guidance published by the HSE. The course includes specific information contained with HSG 264 and ACoP L143. This course is a 2-day training course that includes a tutor-led practical exercise on asbestos risk assessments and use of the priority assessment – HSG 227. The course is also inclusive of a 1-hour examination externally marked. Certification is issued on successful completion of the course.

This course is available in the following training centre locations:

South East, South West, Midlands, North West, North East and Central Scotland.
Call us for dates and booking details

If you are interested in either of our industry leading asbestos management Duty to Manage courses......just give our expert training advisers a call, we will guide you to the most cost efficient route to gaining this vital qualification to enable you to comply with The Control of Asbestos Regulations.

Another first for the UK’s most innovative asbestos training provider.
”...we would rather fail in originality than succeed in imitation...”

Every trainer employed by The Asbestos Specialists undergoes stringent knowledge and industry experience background checks to meet our criteria. The United Kingdom Asbestos Training Association (UKATA) will also approve each Asbestos Specialists trainer; only after receiving this approval will we allow them to provide your training courses.

Asbestos is an emotive issue, asbestos is the ‘hidden killer’ and as such training in asbestos awareness has to be carried out in a way that doesn’t over exaggerate and misinform you of the dangers, it is important to remember asbestos is perfectly safe in most circumstances. Asbestos in good condition, or not going to get damaged, is perfectly safe!

The handling and disturbance of asbestos is a very tricky business, this is why we will make sure that when you train with us we make it very clear of what you can and can’t do - as well as what you must do to protect you, your employees, or even, your family from this hazardous fibre.

Every course we provide is thoroughly checked and audited by UKATA. We believe in providing you with clear and concise information on asbestos.

Originality and professionalism are our ‘watch words’ and our company maxim is: ‘we would rather fail in originality than to succeed in imitation’; We stand by it.


Not sure which training course you need? Call us now, we will be happy to discuss your requirements.

5 surprising facts about asbestos.

With graphic descriptive terms used to describe it, such as ‘the hidden killer’ and ‘deadly fibre’, the discovery or presumption that you may have asbestos in your workplace or even in your home is enough to strike fear into the minds of many people – and rightly so. Despite there being legislative controls to protect workers and members of the public from the 1930s right up until 2012, asbestos is still the single greatest cause of UK work related deaths and to this day it also remains a source of misery and ill-health the world over.

Here are 7 of some of the most surprising facts about asbestos…

1. Asbestos is a natural product – and still mined today:
Yes, asbestos is actually a mineral, unlike many other dangerous materials and substances found in the workplace, asbestos is not manmade. It’s not made in ‘asbestos factories’ - it is a naturally occurring silicate mineral with long, thin needle fibres or soft silky strong fibres held within the rock which is mined from the earth – a practice which is still carried out in many countries such as Russia, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan and, up until 2011, in Canada. In 2009, there were still two million tonnes of asbestos fibre mined worldwide.

2. Asbestos refers to a group of minerals:
The term ‘asbestos’ actually refers to a set of six minerals. All six are strong, heat resistant and chemically inert – properties that originally made it such a desirable material for a range of products and applications. Of the six types, three were commonly used in the UK:
chrysotile (white asbestos),
amosite (brown asbestos) and
crocidolite (blue asbestos).
All six have been found to harm human health due to the long term damage that breathing microscopic asbestos fibres causes to the lungs.

3. We have used asbestos for almost 5000 years:
The earliest known use of asbestos was in about 2,500 B.C in what is now Finland, where fibres were mixed with clay to form stronger ceramic utensils and pots. Since then it was used by most of the world’s major civilisations, including the ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians, where its fire-resistant properties were heralded by many as a form of ‘magic’. However, it wasn’t until 1858 that the asbestos industry formally began, when the Johns Mannville Company in New York began mining asbestos for use as industrial insulation.

4. Remarkable but true:
It might seem absolutely incredible to us now that we are aware of its dangers but, during the 1950s, asbestos was used as a medium in cigarette filters. Between 1953 and 1957 it is estimated that over 13 billion ‘Kent Micronite’ cigarettes were sold worldwide, mostly in the USA. Blue asbestos was used within the filter material to remove the heat from the smoke and tar from the tobacco.
Actually within the first half of the twentieth century asbestos was used in a variety of surprising applications. Back in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, for example, asbestos was within a fake snow product that was used as a Christmas decoration. Its heat-resistant properties meant it was thought of much lower fire risk than alternatives – and it was even used on the film sets of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’


5. Asbestos exposure kills somebody every five hours:
As early as the 1930s it was understood that exposure to asbestos fibres could cause the disease which is known as asbestosis. However since then we have also discovered other diseases associated with being exposed to asbestos fibres.
The most serious disease is mesothelioma – cancer of the outer lining of the lung which is invariably fatal. Due to the risks posed by other people such as family members and ancillary workers who may have been subject to indirect exposure, it is difficult to put an exact figure on the number killed. However, the British Lung Foundation and the Health and Safety Executive estimate that more than 2,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma every year in the UK and someone dies every five hours. What’s more, in a report called the ‘Projection of Mesothelioma Mortality in Great Britain’, produced for the HSE, around 91,000 deaths are predicted to occur in the UK by 2050 as a direct result of exposure to asbestos.

Our vision and mission statements are the purpose of our Company business and the reason for our Company’s existence.

Our vision and mission statements will guide the Asbestos Specialists to spell out our overall goal, provide a path, and guide us with business decision-making.
Commenting on the launch of the company statements Managing Director Les Cooper said:

“...these statements will provide the framework or context within which the company's existing or future business strategies that are, or will be formulated. We take our statements seriously, they are a clear way forward, they are a goal for what the Asbestos Specialists as a company wants to achieve in the asbestos related training industry...”

Company motto
“...we would rather fail in originality than to succeed in imitation...”

Vision Statement
The guiding vision of The Asbestos Specialists is "To bring the best to everyone we deal with". What do we mean by the ‘best’...? we mean the best customer service, the best training and the best price. These three pillars have been the hallmarks of our Company since its foundation in 2003. They remain the foundations which we will continue to build upon.

Mission Statement
To supply outstanding service and training solutions through dedication, innovation and excellence. To become and sustain the position of undisputed marketplace leaders in asbestos related training.

Once again UK Asbestos Specialists are proud to announce another major step forward in the continuous improvement programme of our company, which has been on going since the re-launch in December2010.

Today we are very proud to announce that we have become members of RoSPA.
Of course our membership of RoSPA is just another step on the ladder to maintaining our position as the UK’s leading asbestos awareness and asbestos management training provider.

RoSPA’s Mission and Vision
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), work is centred on two simple statements their mission and vision.

The RoSPA mission is to save lives and reduce injuries.

The RoSPA vision is to lead the way on accident prevention.

These statements provide the foundation on which their work is based - including their long-term goals and what they do on a day-to-day basis.

The RoSPA mission describes their passion, their belief in their "cause" and their energy and commitment to improving the lives of others.

Too many people are killed and seriously injured in preventable accidents. At RoSPA, they remember that every accident “statistic" represents a real person - a life lost or affected, often severely - and a family left enduring the consequences. Everything they do, therefore, is focused on preventing this unnecessary suffering.

The RoSPA vision encapsulates how they work towards the RoSPA mission.

RoSPA have been at the heart of accident prevention in the UK and around the world since our inception back in 1917. With a huge toll of death and injury from accidents remaining in this country and overseas, they are committed to using and adding to the tremendous base of expertise they have built up over many decades.

Commenting on our membership of the British Safety Council, UK Asbestos Specialists Managing Director Les Cooper said;

“As a company we are proud to become members of The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

The Asbestos Specialists believe in the RoSPA ethos of improving health and safety standards in the workplace, which is why we have made another significant investment promoting the RoSPA mission and vision. We already have courses approved by RoSPA and this membership will cement our place at the forefront of the asbestos training industry once again.

Having practised occupational health & safety in many industry sectors for over 20 years, I have always been aware of the fantastic work that RoSPA undertake to promote safe working environments for the employee and employer.

A statement of commitment....
"It not only demonstrates our commitment to improving health & safety in our work places, but also allows us access as an organisation to a constant source of information and support in all areas of occupational health & safety……of course being members of RoSPA will also compliment our other professional membership of The British Safety Council”

On mesothelioma action day campaigners demand research into asbestos cancers set to claim 60,000 lives in next three decades

HEALTH campaigners will mark National Action Day on Mesothelioma today by ramping up their fight for funds to research into the fatal asbestos-related cancer.

Latest figures from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revealed a shocking rise in the number of fatalities from the disease in Britain, which has the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world.

The HSE said that 2,535 people died from mesothelioma in 2012, an increase from 2,291 in 2011 and the disease is expected to kill around 60,000 people over the next 30 years unless new treatments are found.

But campaigners say that investment in mesothelioma research has long been dwarfed by amounts invested in cancers that kill similar numbers of people, such as skin cancer and myeloma.
Asbestos was used widely in construction industry up until the 1970s.

One of the major difficulties for those who contract the disease is establishing when and where they were exposed to the deadly fibres due to the length of time symptoms can remain dormant.

Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group spokesman Graham Dring told the Star the group often came across victims who were diagnosed with mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos 60 years previously.

Following a lengthy campaign the government has now established a compensation scheme for those unable to establish liability.

But campaigners argue that the scheme, which caps compensation at 80 per cent and only applies to those diagnosed with the disease after 2012, does not go far enough.

Mr Dring said the new figures were “shocking” and urged greater government action on the issue. “New cases of mesothelioma in Greater Manchester are increasing year on year,” he said. “It is vital that the government commits research funding to give some hope to sufferers, most of whom contracted this disease simply by going to work.”

Malcolm Yates, a mesothelioma patient from Blackrod, said: “One of the worst aspects of being diagnosed with mesothelioma was the despair of knowing that there were no treatments available. “It just left us feeling so hopeless. We desperately need more funding for mesothelioma research, so that families can hope for a future.”

And construction union UCATT general secretary Steve Murphy said: “This large increase in mesothelioma deaths demonstrates the continuing dangers of asbestos.

“It is essential that today on Mesothelioma Day and in the future far more pressure is applied to politicians to ensure that training is improved for workers and that far greater funding is provided for treating and curing this terrible disease.”

Source: Courtesy of the Morning Star 04/07/2014

We are running a series of information blogs to make you aware of the legal guidelines which apply to you with regards to asbestos in buildings, in the sixth of our series we look at: Landlords

As a Landlord of a commercial property your duty to manage asbestos, as defined within The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 Regulation 4, will depend on the specific terms of your lease or tenancy contract. If you are responsible for carrying out maintenance then this duty is yours. If this is shared then the cost of asbestos management should also be shared and arrangements made between all parties involved.

If you are a Landlord of a domestic property, then you have a duty under the Defective Premises Act 1972 to take reasonable care to see that tenants and visitors are safe from personal injury or disease caused by a defect in the state of the premises, which whilst not specifically mentioned, should include asbestos. Your tenants have a duty to cooperate as far as possible to enable you to fulfil this responsibility.

Our Management of Asbestos in Buildings training course is a fully comprehensive examination based course, which covers all of these matters.
Call us for more information.

We are running a series of information blogs to make you aware of the legal guidelines which apply to you with regards to asbestos in buildings, our second of the series we look at: Commercial Property Owners

As a commercial property owner you have a legal duty to manage asbestos at your premises under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and the ACoP L143 (second edition). This legal duty is placed upon all non-domestic building owners who are responsible for premises that could contain, or do contain, ACMs within or on them. This legal duty, introduced in 2002, stipulates that these building owners must appoint a dutyholder.

Whilst the day-to-day management of asbestos can be delegated to a manager, or management company, the legal duty cannot be delegated and the property owner is still ultimately responsible for ensuring that any appointed persons are competent to fulfil the responsibilities laid out under this duty.

In our experience, the practical role of asbestos dutyholder usually falls to a site's facilities manager, chief safety officer or operations manager. The ‘HSG 264: Managing Asbestos in Premises Survey Guide’ states:
"To help comply with the legal requirements and to ensure that ACMs in premises are properly managed, dutyholders should identify a person (and in some cases a deputy) within their organisation who will be responsible for that management. An appointed person will be essential where the dutyholder has a large or complex building portfolio."

Our managing asbestos training courses and asbestos awareness courses can assist you to comply with these legal duties, give us a call to discuss your requirements.