EXISTING SITES

Running a waste company is not easy, with lots of internal and external pressures needing to be juggled to keep the business running efficiently.

All too often you can become swamped by just the daily ‘stuff’, this can mean that compliance can start to slip, particularly as legislation changes.

We can help to take some of the strain off you by carrying out audits, reviewing paperwork and systems, or helping you to train your staff.

Duty of Care Audits

This is probably one of the areas where most companies are most likely to be in non-compliance. There can sometimes be a fairly relaxed approach to some of the paperwork being issued and signed on behalf of the company and this should perhaps cause a bit of concern as these documents are often statutory requirements and can enter the company into legally binding arrangements, which could land you in trouble for the actions of other companies. Therefore getting it right is really important. Ask yourself a few simple questions:

  • What training have you given to staff on the waste transfer paperwork that they may be signing?
  • When was the last time that you checked the paperwork to see if it was being completed correctly?
  • Do you know the waste paperwork that you are required to complete and what records you are required to keep?
  • Have you done enough to make sure that the waste you send off site is being dealt with legally?

If you cannot answer these questions with any degree of confidence, then it is probably advisable to have a baseline duty of care audit to see where you are in terms of compliance and where you may have areas for improvement. We can help you with this and can also help you with implementing any improvements recommended.

Health & Safety Audits

By now we should all be aware of the importance of health and safety in terms of keeping your staff, customers and others safe. Unfortunately incidents are still all too common place and whereas it tends to be the fatalities that quite rightly grab the headlines, many, many people are absent from work as a result of more minor issues, which none the less can be very debilitating and equally avoidable.

Apart from the obvious wish to avoid the human impact of things going wrong, it also makes very clear business sense with the direct and indirect costs of accidents being a very clear hit to any business. This is likely to become even more sharply brought into focus with the removal of the cap on fines in the Magistrates Courts. Carrying out an Audit to look at areas of good performance and also areas for improvement is therefore really important as ‘ignorance’ is not a defence. We can help you to carry out an Audit and also implement any findings, with the ultimate aim of making your business happier, healthier and more profitable.

At a purely financial level, don’t forget that if you should have a HSE visit and they find a ‘material breach’, then their time will be charged at £124 per hour. This can mean that relatively simple breaches can cost thousands of pounds in regulator bills.

Fire Prevention Plans (FPPs)

Fire is currently one of the main issues affecting the industry, with roughly one fire a day in the waste sector! The causes are many and varied, but the outcomes are often the same- pollution and nuisance to site neighbours and threats to life for the fire crews.

There is multi-agency concern and interest in the issue, with a large number of stakeholders from the responsible industry members, to the Environmental regulators; HSE; Insurance firms; Police; Fire services and Councils. All have been looking at what can be done to prevent, control and minimize the impact of fires within the industry.

One outcome of these discussions has been the identification of a need for waste companies to prepare and implement Fire Prevention Plans where they are dealing with specific waste types. This is likely to be on a phased basis, ‘as required’. We can help with the preparation of a Fire Prevention Plan.