We live in times where attention to health and safety regulations have removed commonsense from many areas of our lives.
Think of schools that have banned conkers unless the contestants wear goggles or the council that banned cheese-rolling because the hill was too steep. There are hundreds of such examples, including the one I mentioned earlier this morning about Network Rail making it virtually impossible for a Women’s Institute to carry on with a railway garden they have tended for 26 years.
We also live in times where terrorists attack us or attempt to attack us in various deadly ways. In times when deranged men kill innocent people in senseless random attacks. These are times when incidents such as these need to be reacted to with great speed. And, generally speaking, our emergency forces do a wonderful job in responding to major incidents.
The coalition government have promised to do away with unnecessary health and safety regulations and I for one wish they’d hurry up and get on with it.
For a start, they could do away with the RA1 form that needs to be filled in by the Metropolitan police before they can commence conducting any sort of operation. The Risk Assessment Form contains 238 potential hazards that officers must consider before embarking on, say, attendance at a football match or, at the other extreme, reacting to a terrorist attack.
Once filled in, the form has to be accompanied by Form RA2 (an inventory of risk activities), Form RA3 (a calculation of levels of risk) and Form RA4 (the resulting recommendations). Then a Commander or Chief Constable has to sign off the recommendations.
A former Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner has said that a ‘self-serving risk assessment culture’ blights police operations. ‘A generation of senior police, fire and ambulance officers have grown up in an environment where avoidance of risk and the fear of being sued by an ‘ambulance-chasing’ solicitor is more important than public duty.’ He added, ‘This corrosive culture of caution and risk-avoidance is why the Aldgate firefighters were ordered to stay at the gates rather than help the grievously wounded.’
Corrosive indeed. Given that the risk of terrorist activity is now rated as severe, now is the time for the government to crack down on this sort of nonsense that serves only the ambulance-chasers and not the public.
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Think of schools that have banned conkers unless the contestants wear goggles or the council that banned cheese-rolling because the hill was too steep. There are hundreds of such examples, including the one I mentioned earlier this morning about Network Rail making it virtually impossible for a Women’s Institute to carry on with a railway garden they have tended for 26 years.
We also live in times where terrorists attack us or attempt to attack us in various deadly ways. In times when deranged men kill innocent people in senseless random attacks. These are times when incidents such as these need to be reacted to with great speed. And, generally speaking, our emergency forces do a wonderful job in responding to major incidents.
The coalition government have promised to do away with unnecessary health and safety regulations and I for one wish they’d hurry up and get on with it.
For a start, they could do away with the RA1 form that needs to be filled in by the Metropolitan police before they can commence conducting any sort of operation. The Risk Assessment Form contains 238 potential hazards that officers must consider before embarking on, say, attendance at a football match or, at the other extreme, reacting to a terrorist attack.
Once filled in, the form has to be accompanied by Form RA2 (an inventory of risk activities), Form RA3 (a calculation of levels of risk) and Form RA4 (the resulting recommendations). Then a Commander or Chief Constable has to sign off the recommendations.
A former Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner has said that a ‘self-serving risk assessment culture’ blights police operations. ‘A generation of senior police, fire and ambulance officers have grown up in an environment where avoidance of risk and the fear of being sued by an ‘ambulance-chasing’ solicitor is more important than public duty.’ He added, ‘This corrosive culture of caution and risk-avoidance is why the Aldgate firefighters were ordered to stay at the gates rather than help the grievously wounded.’
Corrosive indeed. Given that the risk of terrorist activity is now rated as severe, now is the time for the government to crack down on this sort of nonsense that serves only the ambulance-chasers and not the public.
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