Re: Health and safety and its application to hackerspaces

[Russ Garrett]

Hey Tom,

Firstly, I suggest you join the (not terribly obvious)
uk-hackspace-organiser-comms Google Group, which I've CCd. That's
where we discuss some of this stuff.

On 22 October 2012 19:15, Tom Cryer <tomc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you have a health and safety policy?

Our policy is simply this: Make people aware of the risks of what they're doing.

> Do you have risk assessments for your activites or assess competance of people?

We are working on a comprehensive risk assessment, but we don't have
anything formal at the moment. We have a fire risk assessment, which I
had to write because someone recently called the fire department on us
(they were pretty reasonable):

https://github.com/londonhackspace/safety/blob/master/fire-risk-assessment.tex

We have key switches on some of our more expensive/dangerous machines.
We're working on a more automated solution:
http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Project:Tool_Access_Control/Solexious_Proposal

> Do you have public liabiltiy insurace?

Yes. It was required of us when we started renting our space, and we
got it with no questions asked at all.

> Do you get members / guests to sign disclaimer forms?

No. Any such waiver is unenforceable in the UK under the Unfair Terms
in Contracts Regulations 1999:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/2083

> Do you inspect or PAT test any equipment?

No, it's utterly infeasible in a hackspace environment. It's not a
legal requirement. I suspect it may be worth PAT testing equipment
which is owned by the hackspace every few years, but it's not
something we've got round to yet.

> Do you have a first-aid kit / first aiders?

We have a first aid kit, which we make a best effort to keep stocked.
We don't have any official first aiders because we can't guarantee
that anyone will be available.

> Is there anything else in the area you're surprised I'm not asking about?

Probably not. My best advice is not to worry about this too much. As
long as you keep people aware of the risks they're facing, then UK law
has tended to be surprisingly sensible.

Cheers,

Russ

[Russ Garrett]

I apologise that I accidentally CCd the wrong list here, so the entire
London Hackspace list got this email. There's no problem with that
though; if anyone has any comments about safety they are always
welcome.

Russ

--
Russ Garrett
Trustee, London Hackspace
ru...@hackspace.org.uk

[Adrian Godwin]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Russ Garrett <ru...@hackspace.org.uk> wrote:
>
> We are working on a comprehensive risk assessment, but we don't have
> anything formal at the moment. We have a fire risk assessment, which I
> had to write because someone recently called the fire department on us
> (they were pretty reasonable):
>

Speaking of which, one of the few things we thought might be helpful
after that visit was to reduce the pile of sheet materials near one of
the fire escapes. Currently, it seems to be growing.

-adrian

[Önder Vincent Koç]

Lol mistakes can happen, i have done health and saftey on film sets and it can be hectic, UK law is quite easy with those common sense things which is good.

Let me know if you need someone to give you a hand with risk-assesments as such, fire stuff seems to be solid, though i found it hard to locate extinguisers.

Also on another note, not sore how the electrics work with the breaker switches but we could be prone to electrical fires with some of those power cables and units being left unplugged, we should realy get alll the power stuff tucked away and all the 3-pin power plug breakouts secured.

Other than that all seems good, we could also wire the fire alarms to the IRC and mailing list?

--

Many Thanks,

Vincent

Loophole Studios

+44(0)2070431814 | +44(0)7708215323

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