Will Lord Young attack fire safety too?

[Meerkat]

Interesting to note that Lord Young in the "raising standards" section has chosen to pick on "costly" safety consultants who adopt an "overzealous approach" who apparently are responsibile for all the bad H&S advice that is being given. Nothing about EHOs or part-time safety officers with half a clue...

His recommendation is for a voluntary register of safety consultants.  However there are to be no "grandfather rights" for those consultants who do not currently have the required Chartered membership of one of the sponsoring organisations and the register is due to start up in January so not much lead-in time either.

While stressing that the Register is voluntary, he also goes on to say (with regard to small business operating in what he calles a "low hazard environment") "Where health and safety consultants are employed to carry out full health and safety risk assessments, only qualified consultants who are included on the web based directory should be used."

Thus at a stroke it seems that anyone who is running a consultancy but does not meet the qualification criteria for the Register will find themselves struggling for clients.  It's split H&S consultants overnight into two groups and some pretty harsh things are already being said on the web forums of a certain well-known Institution.

Could the same thing happen to Fire Safety Consultants....

[BLEVE]

I would be quite happy if it did

[Meerkat]

You don't know any H&S consultants who are good, experienced people doing a fine job for their clients who will suddenly find themselves not eligible for this register and possibly losing business in three months time because of it then?  Not any you actually sympathise with anyway?

I'm all for standards, but the way this seems to be being introduced in the H&S profession smacks of elitism and is massively unfair to those very many good consultants who have the experience but simply don't have the right set of letters after their name.

[BLEVE]

What about the other side of the coin where some have spent many years and their own cash to obtain skills and who are undercut by others with nothing more than a 2-3 day course?

[Meerkat]

As I see it BLEVE there are three types of safety consultants in relation to this new announcement:

1. Those who are CMIOSH (or one of the equivalent quals) who will be on the new register and will have no particular problems.  Some of them will be very good and competent people - some of them will be "by the book" bluffers who have been in the profession for years and wouldn't know "reasonable and proportional advice" if it smacked them between the eyes.

2. Those who are not CMIOSH and are not really competent.  The ones with an IOSH Managing Safely course taken three years ago who now think they are qualified to give H&S advice to everyone and charge a huge fee.  I will be as gald as you to see the back of these cowboys.

3. Thise who are not CMIOSH but are nonetheless good, competent people, giving good advice to their clients.  These are the consultants who haven't continued on to Chartered membership becasue there was never any reason for them to do so.  They now find that with three months notice they are to be excluded from the register of competency in a profession that some may have been in for years, with no grandfather rights (or none announced so far) and (apparently) no transition period either.

Fair?  I don't think so...

[BLEVE]

True, two year transition would be better but I think that there are also strong vested interests at play now

[Midland Retty]

No its not a fair system. The sceptic in me agrees with Bleve, but whichever way you approach the argument there are significant pitfalls.

An unregulated sector means you get cowboys, conversley a heavily regulated sector risks pricing or pushing decent assessors out of the market, particularly self employed ones.

So its a catch 22, the middle ground, some say, is self regulation, which does seem to work in part, however as Bleve points out there is always going to be a vested interest somewhere - groups of people or trade associations or organisations with vested interests on how the industry self regulates itself.

Also I would agree Meerkat that if we are going to question the competency of private
assessors we must also question the competency of enforcers too. 

[FSO]

Also I would agree Meerkat that if we are going to question the competency of private
assessors we must also question the competency of enforcers too. 

All for it!

Im sure the results will be concerning.

[Speyside]

You don't know any H&S consultants who are good, experienced people doing a fine job for their clients who will suddenly find themselves not eligible for this register and possibly losing business in three months time because of it then?  Not any you actually sympathise with anyway?

I'm all for standards, but the way this seems to be being introduced in the H&S profession smacks of elitism and is massively unfair to those very many good consultants who have the experience but simply don't have the right set of letters after their name.

You are so right they have made this exclusive not inclusive. They could have used a better system to judge competence. They could have used third party certification as a means to assess the competence and quality of the health and safety practitioners. We are all used to third party schemes which are a lot more inclusive i.e. if you meet the standard which has been set by the CB with help from industry then you meet the standard. If you are chartered and have a degree in health and safety you still need to pass just like the guy who has done a two day course. The emphasis is on ability not membership of an exclusive club.

The health and safety profession have done this the wrong way; at the moment the fire risk assessment profession is on track to do this the right way. Let’s hope someone can get a grip of this for the fire risk assessment profession and move it on quickly. If not the cowboys could be on for another bumper season on the ranch