It is that time, the
season of goodwill to all, but spare a thought for the families who have lost
loved ones, this will be a very hard time of year for those families.
GMP as a Police family
have suffered tremendously with the loss of colleagues in tragic circumstances,
unprecedented and difficult to accept.
These officers will
never be forgotten and live on in our memories, for all our colleagues who will
be working over the festive period stay safe and a massive thank you to you
all.
There have been acts
of bravery and tremendous work done by officers throughout the country, we saw
the Olympics and Para Olympics take place, from a Policing angle (no thanks to
G4S) and Health & Safety it was a success.
As we move on into a
New Year let’s hope that we see no repeat of bad events of 2012, this includes
the Governments total lack of respect for the Police service, you reap what you
sow.
Back to the day to day
life of health & safety
“Near Miss Forms”.
Okay I know the first
question from most of you will be “What’s a near miss?” Well it could be lots
of things, but in Health & Safety terms it is defined as;
“ANY ACCIDENT THAT HAD
THE POTENTIAL TO CAUSE HARM, BUT THE HARM WAS NOT ACTUALLY REALISED”.
Some of you will now be
thinking what’s the point in reporting something that hasn’t caused any injury
and the answer to that is fairly simple?
When we are
unfortunate enough to have accidents or receive injuries at work we all report
them to our line managers, who fill in a Form 700b, the reason we do this is to
firstly comply various requirements placed on us by pieces of legislation such
as the RIDDOR Regulations (Reporting of Injury Disease or Dangerous Occurrence
Regulations), the second part of reporting accidents and injuries is to
identify the circumstances or places where accidents occur to see if they can
be reduced. The force does this by continually monitoring the information we
provide, and by carrying out audits to see if the goals they set out to achieve
in the force Health & Safety Policy are being reached.
So for instance you
may have fallen over an uneven piece of paving in the rear yard and suffered
cuts and bruising, you have reported it to your supervision, and they in turn
have completed the 700b and sent it off to the various people that need a copy,
so the force is well aware of your accident.
But what the force or
your division did not know was that several other people had also fallen or
tripped in the same place on the same bit of uneven ground and received no
injury what so ever and therefore made no report to anyone. Because of this, no
trend was established during the forces or divisions monitoring or auditing
process. So as far as everyone knew the yard was in perfect condition because
no one had ever fallen over receiving an injury, and no one had suffered a
“NEAR MISS”.
Now if those several
other people had put “NEAR MISS” forms in to the division the un even rear yard
should have been identified during monitoring as an accident waiting to happen
and could have been repaired, which hopefully would have stopped you falling
over and suffering your cuts & bruises.
Now I know we are all
inundated with paper work, but most of that relates to our prisoners (I know I
should have called them customers but they were prisoners when I joined and
they will always will be) the near miss form is for our benefit so please take
a few moments to fill one in if you are unfortunate enough to suffer a near
miss.
