Small festivals under attack

[Rich BT]

While that's the origins of H&S, it stopped being that a long time ago. Once all of the "it's happened in the past, we need to stop it happening again" things had been addressed, the very preservation of H&S staff at the level they'd grown to required them to start to find new things, sometimes verging on the ridiculous.

For example: there was one year at GuilFest where its licence stipulated that to buy alcohol from the bar each over-18 person had to be wristbanded at the entrance gate - no wristband, no sale.

Now, while someone aged (say) 22 might look possibly under-18, a 50 year old person never looks under-18 - so why do they need to be wristbanded?

And ultimately, anyone under-18 who might have been challenged about their age would have brought ID anyway - so they'd have used that to get wristbanded and so they'd have been no change in who got served.

Yet doing this stupid idea got H&S to justify their existence for another year.

[eFestivals]

Thats quite amusing as the h+s folks where we are told us not to do it as it bad practice - we had no intention of doing it anyway. They said it makes the bar staff complacent.

I'd guess from that that it was something they'd implemented in the past or been told was 'good practice' in the past, and then got to double up their work by making it 'bad practice' a year or three later, thus further justifying their existence.

I'm not anti H&S .... there's lots of things that have been changed for the better via what they do. But it's not the case that those original 'need to be changed' things remain their focus; those have been sorted, and everyone now knows what is best practice and in the main there's nothing for H&S to do around those things now aside from quick checks that they've actually been done. So they're having to invent new things out of nothing to justify their continued existence and importance.

[Rich BT]

I am not anti health and safety either and half of what we do and most other festivals is above best practice. The Purple Guide is actually relevant and quite practical however the issue we find is that certain council individuals make up their own rules away from HSE guidance. Its hard to budget costs and manage health and safety practice when you have some council h+s worker making up the rules as they go along and they are given the power to enforce what they want. If everything was the same accross the board then the organisers life would be much easier and avoid conflicting information from various agencies which in my view creates h+S risks. We got to the point of not knowing which to listen to but sided with caution and listened to the local council chap as he had the most power over our license.

I spoke to our new h+s chap for the new district we are hopefully locating to yesterday and half of what we had implemented this year he does not want to see it - how can that be right?

Edited August 10, 2010 by Rich BT

[rabid]

I am not anti health and safety either and half of what we do and most other festivals is above best practice. The Purple Guide is actually relevant and quite practical however the issue we find is that certain council individuals make up their own rules away from HSE guidance. Its hard to budget costs and manage health and safety practice when you have some council h+s worker making up the rules as they go along and they are given the power to enforce what they want. If everything was the same accross the board then the organisers life would be much easier and avoid conflicting information from various agencies which in my view creates h+S risks. We got to the point of not knowing which to listen to but sided with caution and listened to the local council chap as he had the most power over our license.

I spoke to our new h+s chap for the new district we are hopefully locating to yesterday and half of what we had implemented this year he does not want to see it - how can that be right?

[eFestivals]

Surely there's some come-back on that. Fair enough it probably wouldn't be in your interest to complain but there must be some way of making sure these little Hitlers (there, I said it) are kept in check.

There is - but from what I get to hear of, it's something that has to be done with care.

Festie organisers are able to challenge things, but they have to present good reasons (often including how things are done elsewhere without there being problems), and they have to approach the regulators in such a way that it doesn't piss them off - the very last thing any organiser needs is those types thinking that the organiser has scant regard for safety and regulation as it undermines their confidence that they'll do all that is necessary. Undermining that confidence can result in extra things being pushed their way, a greater attention to detail when they check what's been done (and they can normally find something wrong if they look hard enough no matter how conciousness the organiser), and at the extreme end of things could result in the licence being revoked (which is essentially my take on what happened with the Big Green Gathering a couple of years ago - the regulators lost all confidence in them).

[Flaminglippy]

Now, while someone aged (say) 22 might look possibly under-18, a 50 year old person never looks under-18 - so why do they need to be wristbanded?

And ultimately, anyone under-18 who might have been challenged about their age would have brought ID anyway - so they'd have used that to get wristbanded and so they'd have been no change in who got served.

Yet doing this stupid idea got H&S to justify their existence for another year.

[rabid]

There is - but from what I get to hear of, it's something that has to be done with care.

Festie organisers are able to challenge things, but they have to present good reasons (often including how things are done elsewhere without there being problems), and they have to approach the regulators in such a way that it doesn't piss them off - the very last thing any organiser needs is those types thinking that the organiser has scant regard for safety and regulation as it undermines their confidence that they'll do all that is necessary. Undermining that confidence can result in extra things being pushed their way, a greater attention to detail when they check what's been done (and they can normally find something wrong if they look hard enough no matter how conciousness the organiser), and at the extreme end of things could result in the licence being revoked (which is essentially my take on what happened with the Big Green Gathering a couple of years ago - the regulators lost all confidence in them).