From the Desk of Mark Dawes
This course will be on of the best investments you will ever make and let me tell you why.
Risk assessments are a legal requirement for your business, be it a large or small one, and whether you run a charity or a not for profit organisation so if you run a training company, healthcare organisation, care home, school martial arts club, etc., the law applies to you directly.
The problem you you may have therefore is that you may not have done them or maybe you have tried to do them without having any proper training, which means you would not be classed as a competent person under Health and Safety legislation which means your risk assessment wouldn’t protect you if someone tried to sue you or if the Health & Safety Executive investigated you and/or decided to prosecute you (a privilege you also pay for at a rate of £154 per hour).
You are also probably someone who has put everything into your business. You may also be someone who has turned their passion into a business, so you love what you do and enjoy the freedom that running your own business gives you. Your business may also be a family affair which will be the legacy you leave to your children or grandchildren, which is one of the greatest things you can leave behind, that will pass on the financial security and freedom onto them that you have worked and struggled so hard to build.
So imagine for a moment if that was all taken away from you because someone got injured as a result of you having not done a risk assessment to identify the risk and what safety measures you could have put in place to have prevented it happening.
In one recent case (Kennedy v Cordia (Services) LLP UKSC) the Supreme Court (the Highest Court in the land) held that an employer was held liable for the injuries sustained by a home carer who had simply slipped whilst walking on an icy public footpath due to her employers failure to carry out a suitable risk assessment and provide her with any personal protective equipment.
So imagine if a similar thing happened to you.
For example, someone slipped in a classroom and injured themselves, or they were injured in a physical skills training session because you hadn’t done a risk assessment of the activity and any equipment you were using. And what if someone gets injured at work because they hadn’t received any training or (and this is just as worse) the training provided for them was not fit for purpose and/or they hadn’t been given the appropriate personal protective equipment. The list goes on…..
And the worst feeling in the world is when you get a letter drop through your letterbox from a solicitor stating that their client is suing you for damages. When that happens you feel a sinking and sick feeling in your stomach, your mouth goes as dry like a desert in summer, your arms turn to clay as your hands become heavy as in an instant you see images in your mind of everything you have been literally taken away from you. You then have to break the news to your business partner (that may even be your husband or wife) and as you do you see the fear in their face as they too start to imagine a very bleak and dark future. And what about your kids? All the things you dreamt about that you wanted to provide for them that you may have never had could be taken away.
You realise that you could face financial ruin which means you might not be able to meet the mortgage payment on your house and what type of job would you get when this is all over? Who is going to employ someone who was prosecuted for negliglence in their own business? You may have to close the business and the press will never let the truth get in the way of a good story so you may find your business and private life being reported in the press if you are prosecuted and/or found guilty of negligence, and if that failure led to a death you could face criminal charges and even a length prison sentence. And what about the stigma attached to that? This could result in your kids being teased and maybe even bullied at school because someone got seriously injured or killed because you did nothing to prevent it.
As a result you may even have to move home and try and start over someplace else which involves moving away from friends, relatives and loved ones. The kids will need to go to a different school and try and make new friends and all of this could damage their mental health as well as yours and your partners.
And how do I know all this? Well I was a health and safety representative for a large union many years ago and I have seen first hand what organisations will do when something goes wrong. They will try and shift the blame onto whoever they can and that will be whoever they decide was responsible.
I’ve also worked as an Expert Witness giving expert testimony in many courts in the UK and I have seen people and companies lose, time after time, all because they didn’t have a risk assessment in place for a hazard that was foreseeable or because the risk assessment submitted in their defence wasn’t done by a suitably competent person (so it was easy to tear holes in it, which is what lawyers love doing).
The sad part of all of that was I also saw good, decent, genuine law abiding people get found guilty too because they didn’t know that they had to a risk assessment. But the law is a dispassionate process and ignorance of the law is no excuse, so they ended up being found guilty. Don’t let this be you.
That’s why you must do this course.