Health and Safety – Everyone’s Responsibility

Hi to you all this article was written in November 2013, so please accept my apologises if Christmas has been and gone.

If it has I hope you and yours had a good one and a happy new year.

In early November I attended at the old Camelot theme park, the venue was being used to facilitate public order training.

The day started at Clayton brook for a briefing (which was well delivered and an excellent briefing).

 The staff then deployed in convoy to the venue once at the venue the scenario unfolded rioters on the streets of Camelot bricks and petrol bombs being thrown, reports of firearms seen, challenging for the commander on the day and physically demanding for the police officers.

Students from the local college acted as rioters and were very enthusiastic at the opportunity to brick the police.

The old jousting arena formed part of the scenario, this was terracing and gave the officers things to think about.

All in all it was a good day and I am sure all the participants found it productive and realistic and enjoyable.

 

I was asked to raise issues within the custody offices, these included the use of spit hoods and the ambient noise caused by prisoners banging on the cell doors.

On the spit hoods issue and officers being spat at, the health & safety figures/stats did not support this.

There were only a very small number of incidents reported in custody and on the streets.

So I will reiterate what I have previously stated, if you want the support from the federation and your federation reps you need to give us the ammunition, by filling in near misses and 700b’s injury on duty forms.

Without these we are the proverbial toothless tiger, so give us the teeth and fill in the forms.

You are letting yourselves down, then blaming the federation

On the ambient noise, estates will be attending the custody offices to assess the cell doors, if they are found to be defective then they should be repaired or replaced.

It is this time of year when we go to work in the dark and go home in the dark, so remember to check your vehicle lights on private and police vehicles and especially those of you who use motorcycles and pedal cycles.

Please remember health & safety is everyone’s responsibility, if you become aware of an issue don’t just ignore it, report the matter or do something about it.

Highlight the issue if the paths are frosty and slippy around the police stations, so they can be gritted.

Remove defective broken chairs so others do not come along and injure themselves, these are all accidents that can be avoided.

So lets all do our bit to prevent unnecessary accidents.