Kevin Deveson's newest comments

As a fast track step in helping to immediately secure the health of workers
all workers should wear appropriate dust masks where they are or
their colleagues produce dust in their operations. No matter how trivial the
work treat every job as an asbestos risk and not take any chances....even asbestos surveys are not always 100% dependable.. This requirement would also include appropriate vacumn and dust cover disposals and training within the RM statement. This does not help the domestic home DIY workers however most DIY instructions include good advice on wearing dust masks but not normally the appropriate standard for max protection against asbestos. This subject is a concern but has been around in the domestic and non-industiral arena for to many years but only really coming to light for real action as a result of tradepersons now starting showing on the health stats as being at higher risk from this danger.....bit late for most now I'm afraid however very valid point about the childrens exposure and I wonder how many council house tenats actually know where they have asbestos lurking in their homes.

"Policies not worth the paper they were printed on" ! "Insurers keeping the premiums that they had been paid" ? When one finds these old original policies one can see that the premium paid for EL policies in the 50//60's were just hundreds of pounds and on one recent small company EL policy slip..... £35 for unlimited liabiity!
In reality, in those early days, the "general" EL insurers had no vision that they would end up picking up the tab and reserving for long tail asbestos exposures at these current levels of compensation.

It may be in the contract of employment that they can recover such
costs suggest look there first. The first service is key on most new
cars and making sure any extra oil loss is replenished to avoid an
engine seize/wear is quite crucial and may have been the reason for the
later seizure...but still unlikely. Using the wrong fuel and not fully
cleaning up the situation may also have bought on the seizure however
typically the synthetic oil used in most cars these days is really robust
so was the correct oil used at the last service etc etc. I think I would have asked for an independant engineer review of this engine failure to fully
establish if this was an engine failure or driver error .... I think it unlikely
the driver contributed to the failure ....look on the web for the car manufacturer forums plenty of incidents are normally recorded to give one
a clue in this area.

I wonder if the Board of Directors will give back their bonus payments earnt from this "nice little earner"

I would like landlords to also declare any income streams from insurance rebates
that they may enjoy.... in particular Insurance landlords.

What are folk doing about people who
work from home. They may be smokers in their home which would be an issue for managers, suppliers or visitors dropping into their home. The employee may not smoke but their husband or kids
might thus making the house not a smoke free environment for visitors.... etc etc any thoughts from others faced with this dimension regards Derek

Fire extinguishers in cars - tempting fate. Fire usually too much for small units to cope with - far more economic human wise to keep driver away from danger...hopefully if they are able.

Yes access is allowed but only certain members of our volunteer fire crew who have been trained by the lift service engineers in releasing staff out of hours. All winding rooms are kept locked at all times with just service engineers and fire crews having access to the keys nobody else has access not even the FMs.

Useful information can I just move the
scenario a tad and substitute a sales rep for the maintenance driver. ie where does a sales rep working day start? ie when they start their journey/hours to drive to their sales call destination or when they arrive at their sales call destination?

Hopefully 2000 year new cars will be well
under the new sound regs.as a lot of
manufacturers take into account the comforts of drivers. Even diesels that
were traditionally noisy have gone quiet some of which due to the technology of bringing the units in line with Euro 4
environmental/tax initiatives. Older tractors and lorrys will need some work I suspect in this area. It will also be interesting how fast the EL claims will now start gearing up in line with the new noise levels.

I feel a label notice "it is dangerous to stick your body out of a third floor window" being printed as this is being discussed.... bit like
sticking your head out of a moving
train window....they still do it whatever
notice you slap on it.....yes agree
this decision was "off piste"

Ref Insurance for business use beware -

Not all family private cars are insured in the name of the employee. If the spouse/partner wants to use their private family car for employees business use they may not automatically
have cover if they are not the named insured on the policy.

Check licences from "time to time" thereafter? check licences "periodically"? Bit vague..... Bench mark good practice suggests annual checking however this makes another full time admin job when dealing with a large company workforce along with the other driving partners and dependants.

On top of which one then adds the hire car users, the pool car users and those folk who use their own cars on company business. When dealing with this mass of administration and recording on an annual basis it is a task which can only really be as good as the moment one looked at the docs as the driver could be banned a week later. It would be useful if the DVLA mirrored the USA and allowed access to their database for reliable one source checking of docs.(nice little earner for them as well to cut their costs). Any other solutions, legal wordings or getarounds appreciated...