SEDERUNT: S Hunter R Lovering J Davis M Bancroft M Johnstone M Scott-Smith J Brannigan A Milne S Boucher D Duff D Cawkwell J Johnston C Shiels S McMorland A Sharman B Anderson I Murray T Mellon A White M Gorman R Walker K Lloyd J McCraith N Oliver T Ambler A Green J Hepburn V Stewart B Holmes

APOLOGIES: Liz Young, Graeme Lyall, Bob Bertram, Andrew Reid, Douglas Murray, Harry Gardner, Dick Morrison, Bob Stainton, Stewart Page, Roddy McLean, Peter Quill, Dave Sinclair.

1.0 CHAIR: Richard Lovering took the Chair and outlined the safety arrangements.

2.0 MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS (May 2004)

2.1 Receipt: These had been received apart from Jim McCraith’s.

2.2 Accuracy: Proposed by A Green; Seconded by I Murray.

3.0 MATTERS ARISING NOT ON AGENDA : None

4.1 Scottish Border’s Safety Forum: Meeting: Wednesday 16th June Tontine Hotel. Tea & coffee available from 6.30 with the first presentation at 7pm. Risk Assessment, Scotland's Health At Work, Fire Risk Assessment and COSHH

4.2 HQ – Membership: National – 27769; Edinburgh Branch – 790. Corporate – 346; Associate 213; TechSP – 111

Construction – 187; Public Services – 136; Environmental – 97; Offshore – 45; Healthcare 38; Consultancy – 33; Education – 33; Fire Risk Management – 23.

The meeting noted that there had been no presentation of certificates recently and asked the Secretary to check whether these were being sent directly from HQ rather than to himself for framing and presentation.

4.3 IOSH Poster Competition: Noted that this covered Construction and was being organized completely by HQ this year.

5.0 BRANCH EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT ADVISOR - Liz Young. Nothing to report.

6.1 PUBLIC SERVICES – Marion Johnstone: The National safety Symposium would be from 6-8 September. Each SG was producing a PowerPoint presentation about itself on CD. These would be available for Branches to show during meetings.

2. CONSTRUCTION - Roddy McLean. Executive were considering a successor to Roddy.

6.3 FIRE RISK MANAGEMENT - Dave Sinclair. Nothing to report.

6.4 HEALTHCARE - Martin Scott-Smith. Nothing to report.

6.5 ENVIRONMENT – Julian Davis.

Julian distributed flyers fom the Scottish Executive on a consultation being carried out on Scotland’s Seas. There would be a joint conference with the Construction Group on 14 October at Aston Villa Football Ground. IOSH had just recently published a book - "Key Aspects of Environmental Management".

6.6 OFFSHORE - Tam Boyd: Nothing to report.

6.7 RAILWAYS - Need a representative

6.8 CONSULTANCY - Derek Cawkwell:

Derek reported that the reference to competency was to be removed from the IOSH website while a pilot scheme covering three modules was being trialed. The SG hoped to set up a simplified networking scheme to enable members to exchange information. The SG hoped to have meetings in Scotland and Ireland but wanted feedback about locations and cost. They were also hoping to run a seminar in November but were looking for a speaker.

6.9 SAFETY SCIENCES - Steve Boucher: Nothing to report.

6.10 TELECOMMUNICATIONS – Graeme Lyall: Nothing to report.

6.11 EDUCATION – Allan Dick. Need a replacement for Allan.

6.12 Max reported that the other two SGs were Rural Industries and Retail but we had very few members in these two SGs.

7. FORTH and TAY DISTRICT

12 members had attended the site visit last week to the new and very interesting Tayside Fire Brigade Training Facility at Perth. This had included a presentation on the effects of forthcoming fire legislation.

8. MEMBERS ITEMS

8.1 Site Visit: Fri 25 June: 1230 Castle Inn, Dirleton, 2pm East Fortune Airfield. Full details on website.

8.2 Roger Midson Challenge Trophy: Friday 21^st May = Target shooting - Won by Graeme Lyall overall with Marion Johnstone winning Air Pistol and Jim McCraith the Crossbow.

8.3 Secretary’s Sipper Golf Tournament: 28^th May - Perth – Won by Andy Finnie. Thanks recorded to sponsors – Core Utilities (prize of a DVD player) and Praxis42. Thanks recorded to G McGeorge for organizing the event.

8.4 R Lovering mentioned a recent House of Lords decision: Simmons v British Steel - details at http://www.lawreports.co.uk/hlpcapre0.4.htm. Reinforces the original approach of "you take your victim as you find him" so, psychiatric injuries suffered as a result of physical injuries are all included.

8.5 Tom Mellon asked if anyone had details of a suitable course for Senior Management on Accident Investigation.

Julian Davies had introduced the speaker as Bill Holmes - a Director from Sypol a consultancy organization based in Scotland. Bill indicated that Sypol had been formed some 25 years previously by the current President Elect for IOSH – Lawrence Waterman and the Scottish office had been opened some 2 years ago.

A lot of the past work from the organization was supporting the offshore industry with an occupational health service for many years, but now Sypol provide –

• Chemical Management System – they have in excess of 500,000 COSHH Risk Assessments
• Occupational Health and have advisers based in Scotland as well as throughout the UK
• Health & Safety Consultancy
• Environmental consultancy
• Training in health safety and environment issues up to NEBOSH Certificate and Diploma standard.

Content of the presentation

Bill then indicated that the agenda he had for the presentation was to include comment upon –

• The Environment and Qualification Profiles
• What are the issues
• Common Ground & Controls
• Hazardous Substances & Conflict
• OSH&E Management Systems
• Land Use & Planning
• Substitution & Hierarchy of Controls
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• The Way forward - COMAH & Mutual Understanding Qualifications, Training and Experience

The speaker pointed out that there are the two elements of the environment – the Built environment which is all about the places in which we work and there is the natural environment.

He then went through a quick "straw poll" of the assembled members as to who had –

• OSH Qualifications
• OSH&E Qualifications
• OSH Qualifications with E Responsibilities

At which stage it became obvious that a number of employers were passing on the accountability and control for Environmental matters onto the Health & Safety Practitioner without ensuring they had the necessary formal qualifications to do the tasks asked of them.

What are the issues?

The speaker pointed out that there could well be issues where there may be OSH&E conflict or compatibility – where the health & safety requirements may be opposed to the environmental requirements. An example being fumes within the workplace: H&S approach may be one of extraction to ensure they do not create a hazardous standard for the employees to work in, but where do they put the fumes – out into the big wide world for the environment to suffer.

It was felt however that skills & individual expertise of the Safety Practitioner can be harnessed to work successfully within the environmental field, balancing out the best use of the resources available and working together. IOSH has gained the Royal Charter and is progressing towards the Individual Charter for its members; similarly the Society for the Environment (SocEnv) is a new umbrella body for environmental affairs which has been formed by 10 leading environmental institutions and learned societies, who are taking as their key objective to achieve Royal Charter Status and then a new qualification of a Chartered Environmentalist. (C.Env)

This is perhaps shown initially from the Health & Safety at Work Act under section 5 – The control of harmful emissions into the atmosphere and a number of the hazards/aspects are the same –

Radioactive substance – Ionising Radiation Regs & Radioactive Substances Act

Hazardous Substances – COSHH Regs & EPA 90

However one aspect which fights the similarity is the controls which follow on –

• Health & Safety look to – remove it from the work area & get it out
• Environment look to – prevent it getting into the environment & keep it in

and no where else is this more pertinent than in the handling of hazardous chemicals which are –

• Used
• Stored
• Transported and
• Disposed of

The speaker then illustrated by past cases the potential for problems by examples from his own background

• Under fire conditions there is a lot of use of water – this is needed to put the fire out obviously, but what happens to all the water as it runs off – if it runs off into fishing waters the damage is apparent fairly quickly
• Chemical spillages will take both health and safety and environmental considerations for it correct control and this is particularly important for the major spillages
• Disposal and waste consents to dispose of effluent into local waters. A past case of disposal by a contractor was audited only to find out that Ammonia waste was being transported half way round the UK to be diluted to virtually the same level and disposal into the north sea further down the coast.

A view of recent job adverts tends to show there is more and more pressure being brought to bear to gain integrated OHS&E systems within the industry and the recent IOSH Policy stated -

More and more of the current day issues will impinge on both the health & safety as well as the environmental issues, for instance in any CDM project there will be a need to consider the Environmental Impact Assessment as well as the health & safety aspects and consequences.

Not too far back in our history we took Halon as being the best thing since sliced bread for the control of fire, but now it is recognised as being a major ozone depleting agent and has had to be banned. Similarly with the detergents, de-ionised water, zinc, iron – these were all okay for the workers, but they were bad for the environment.

Some of the issue goes back to the original conflict between health & safety and environment in the hierarchy of actions to control hazards

It places additional requirements on the providers of the necessary information

Look to what works well in practice and the Control of Major Accident Hazards (The COMAH Regulations 1999) is an example of the way it may go- it is after all ‘A Memorandum of Understanding’ between parties - A good example of Health & Safety in Partnership with the Environment - Mutual Understanding

There must be an appreciation of both areas:

Health & Safety e.g.

• DSEAR
• COSHH
• COMAH
• CDM
• Workplace Regs
• Legionella ACOP
• Transport of Dangerous Goods

Environment e.g.

• EPA
• COMAH
• Town and Country Planning

There is now a growing range of formal training and education for the environmental sector –

• MSc Energy Management
• MSc Environmental, Toxicology & Pollution
• BEng Civil & Environmental Engineering
• Post Graduate Diploma to Phd Research
• Pg Environmental Management for Business
• Environmental Management Systems Implementation
• Environmental Policy & Regulations
• Environmental Management Systems Internal Auditing

HS&E Qualifications & Experience

• Health & Safety professionals have entry level qualifications for Environmental Studies
• Health & Safety evaluations and environmental impact assessments are usually conducted jointly

• SEPA NetRegs – Business Support
• NEBOSH Specialist Diploma in Environmental Management
• Builds on the existing knowledge of H&S Legislation and Risk Assessment
• HAZOP – FMEA – FTA

SEPA & Local Authority are your Local Friendly Experts

SEPA Website

10. DATES OF NEXT MEETINGS
1. District: 2 September
2. Branch: 9 September: Court Procedure ("taster" for seminar later in year)
11. CLOSURE: Members were invited to mingle and have a safe and relaxing break.