Looking for a little bit of advice, short story…we had a CI “Looking After” all things Health & Safety but left near 2 weeks or so ago. We have our inspection in the next couple of weeks and I’ve been asked to make sure everything is up to date. The handful of staff we have do not know what needs to be done, put on walls and put in our H&S folder. Do I just contact our H&S main person and hold my hands up and explain it’s been thrown in my lap, would the H&S person be happy to come and help me? I’m not looking to just throw things together and put on a brave face. I do know H&S can be tedious and boring but we have it in place for a reason. If I’m going to take this on, are courses available or anything on bader for me to attempt to get my head around this? #Headache
In a nutshell, yes contact your H&S bod and just ask. They don’t want to fall squadrons and are actually human (shock).
With mine a couple of years ago I had pretty much nothing. I looked through ACP5 and tried updating all I could but could tell it wasn’t up to par. H&S bloke came down for the inspection and pretty much just made a list of what I needed to do to get gold. Did it, had a re-inspection a month or two later and got my gold star.
If you have a star award already on the reverse it also shows guidance on what you need to do to pass for each star it’s something to get you going too.
Just make sure whatever you do make sure it’s on the most current version of the form, not that anything changes on the form except revision number, but they do seem to get extremely excited about it and being adenoidal train spotter types with OCD have no common sense.
We had problems uncovered at a previous inspections - far more serious than a form version number. Inspector was understanding of what happened, guided us through the resolution, helped us, and we passed upon re-inspection.
Bearing in mind H+S is LAW, you need to comply.
Showing prejudice and stereotyping, when someone is asking for help, has zero value.
@Newbie_CI I’m sure you’ve got nothing to worry about. Explain the situation and your Wing H+S advisor should give you all the info you need. They’re people too.
When it is just form versions and none of the info on the form changes, then it is just bloody irritating that common sense doesn’t happen. Last year we had to go through the tedium of transferring all of the RAs onto a new style form, because some insignificant individual(s) thought changing the signing off makes any difference, yet not one word of the content of the RAs changed.
I was a H&S rep for 10 years at work in the 90s to early 00s and since there hasn’t been as much change to the internal paperwork as there has been since the ATC caught up with the rest of the world.
If you want to see what we have on my unit, I’m happy to send you copies
Although I didn’t read ours word for word, I do think if that is correct and the only thing that changed was the signing off part, then it needs looking at. Having to print these RA’s off which wastes so much paper and ink is starting to irk me big time. And then chasing people down that need to sign them 
Contact your H&S officer, WSO etc.
I recently did a WSO inspection of a unit. We found issues, I gave guidance, and I’m sending over some forms as examples.
We had this experience too - I had to retype the RA’s onto new forms. Took hours. Our TSA will no longer accept any RA’s on the old form. The only things that have changed between the old and new forms is the signature block, some of the font sizes and the form number.
Since when was your TSA anything to do with Squadron Health and Safety? Surely that’s the job of the Regional Health and Safety Advisor?
It’s both that have a problem with it unfortunately. I was first alerted to the change when the TSA bounced one of our activities back because the RA’s (although in date and otherwise correct) were on the old form.
I argued that all of the squadron Risk Assessments in my Health and Safety binder were on the old form but were still valid, so why should the ones for this particular activity need to be any different if the risks hadn’t changed. The TSA then got in touch with my Regional Health and Safety advisor who instructed me to change all of the RA’s in my binder if we were to pass another Health and Safety Inspection, and that they were no longer valid because they were on an old version of the form.
I’d love for all this kind of paperwork to be digital, our H&S folder needs its own RA and you need to wear steel toe capped boots for the weight of it 
I think TSAs are trying to make jobs for themselves and interfering.
They need something to do in the winter.
The North region H&S bod has put a handy guide on SharePoint as the basic H&S standard.
There is also a guide to the star system Hope this works as well!
You could contact your H&S bod if you struggle with specifics like writing risk assessments, but there is a lot of stuff freely available on SharePoint and the internet - the challenge is finding it!
What would be good is an info screen where the pages appear for 2 minutes each on a loop that you could stick in the main hall with all the Building RAs, Fire Actions etc, all digital and no paper copies.
At work we don’t replace noticeboard things every year and RAs are done every two years, unless there is a need to change them. But then it is more realistic at work and as much as we have an H&S manager he seems happiest leaving things alone.
don’t be afraid to ask your Wing or regional H&S bod thats what they are there for.
Trent Wing has some easy to use guides on sharepoint. I think most regions/will have something.
If you are going to take on the post it is worth doing the risk assessor course. its boring but will give you some background.
Part of me really wants to submit a risk assessment in Comic Sans, and then have a very long argument with someone about perspective, the point of health and safety documentation and the nature of volunteering.
Wingdings…
“displays alright on my end…”
I realise this was a joke, but if it’s true, you’re probably doing it wrong.
We’ve just had a H&S visit and they helped us to remove over 50% of what was in the file as it’s no longer required. All of our RAs are online now and we have a simple review sheet outlining the current state of each. 