by Ross Clark - Wednesday, 26th September 2007 -

I come to this conclusion because its sense of irony seems to me to be a little superior to that of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin or any of the other well-known YBAs.

Take the latest offering on the HSE website: “Myth of the Month”. This exposes what it sees as the porkies put out by the press in order to undermine its work. “Help fight the myths,” it appeals to visitors. “Tell others about these pages”.

One recent myth of the month was: “Risk assessments must always be long and complex”. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

And just to show you what simple documents they can be, on the very same website you can start by reading the HSE’s 38-page booklet, An Introduction to Health and Safety, before moving on to the much more thorough 100-page Essentials of Health and Safety.

But do these documents have to be long and complex? Never. If you are still unconvinced, the HSE offers a sample risk assessment for an office employing 18 staff.

First, it suggests that you walk around the office looking for hazards and then fill in the following columns: “what are the hazards?”; “what is being done about the hazard?”; and “further action required”.

For example, an entry in the first column reads: “All staff and visitors may suffer sprains or fractures if they trip over trailing cables/rubbish or slip on spillages”. What is being done about this? “Cabinet drawers and doors are kept closed when not in use; cable trailing from electrical machinery is managed; and floors, staircases and doors are cleaned on a regular basis by the cleaners.”

While that may sound fair enough to most of humanity, it is, of course, insufficient in the wonderful world of health and safety quangos.

In fact, urgent, further action is deemed to be necessary: supervisors must be appointed for each corner of the office; there must be regular staff meetings to discuss “housekeeping standards”; and there must be a “three-monthly inspection by the office manager”.

The absurdity of all this for a staff of 18 is astounding. Presumably, the office manager works in the building, in which case he should be looking out for hazards every day. If Sandra from accounts trips over Gavin’s computer lead and ends up spread-eagled in a pot plant, it is hardly a comfort to know that everything was fine when the office manager last signed off on the premises two and a half months ago.

The next hazard is: “All staff could suffer from back pain lifting deliveries of paper”. What is being done? “A trolley is employed to transport boxes of paper” and the moving of heavy equipment is limited to “named members of staff” who have had training in lifting heavy objects.

But for the HSE that is not enough. The company must (if it hasn’t gone bust diverting resources from real work to coming up with this garbage) send its named staff on refresher courses and should “renegotiate its contract with its paper suppliers to include ‘delivery to point of store (ie, store cupboard)’”.

And what about the poor blighters from the paper company? Don’t they have backs, too? If the “named people” cannot be trusted to haul boxes of paper on the office trolley from reception to a cupboard, it is hard to see how a paper company can safely send its workers out on such a hazardous mission either.

Maybe the next step will be for the office manager to arrange the roof of the office to be removed at regular intervals so that the paper can be lowered in by crane.

Anyone wanting to know more is invited to the HSE’s Information Centre. And where is that?

Caerphilly. Geddit?

Let no one say that the HSE doesn’t have a sense of humour. I just wonder how much of taxpayers’ money was spent moving the department to a remote Welsh town just so someone could have a little joke.