Workers at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have been banned from shifting furniture around their offices, in a move that has been criticised as "health and safety gone mad." Signs on the walls of the London headquarters, and almost all of their 31 offices across the country, read "Do not lift tables or chairs without giving 48 hours notice to the HSE management." As a result, if staff want to move furniture around, to hold a meeting for example, they must book a porter at least two days in advance. The policy was highlighted by Labour peer, Lord Berkeley who was attending a meeting at the headquarters. He has since raised the matter in the House of Lords, demanding to know why the HSE have put such notices up, taking into account this is an organisation whose responsibilities include workers at nuclear plants, oil rigs and huge factories.
Lord Berkeley said, "It's ridiculous to mollycoddle people like that. It's taking health and safety precautions to a ridiculous level, they ought to be concentrating on the important things. The HSE is an office like any other - so if it is not required in other offices, why there?" A spokesperson for the HSE said their policy for moving office furniture is based on its own assessment of the risks from manual handling, as set out in the Manual Handling Regulations SI 1992/2793, which is one of the main causes of work-related absences among its staff.
You may not be shocked to discover that the HSE has one of the best records for accidents in the UK, with 107 injuries per 100,000 workers over the last year compared with 150 per 100,000 in education, 360 in agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, 640 in construction and 1,390 in transport, storage and communications.
