Dealing with a Major Incident Peter Corfield, Director General of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Dealing with a Major Incident

Peter Corfield, Director General of NASS

Overview

• Why bother to prepare?
• Implications of an incident occurring
• Practical Aspects

– Legal Issues – Organisation – Investigation Process – Communication

• Inquests/Civil/Criminal Proceedings

Implications of an incident occurring

• Emergency services (Fire/Ambulance).
• Legislation (Police/HSE/Local Authority)
• Inquest/Court Proceedings

Note: the death of an employee in the workplace is one of the most difficult issues you will ever have to deal with.

• Interests of company/employees/family of

bereaved?

• Understand external investigation process
• Legal consideration of internal investigation
• Communication/response team

Practical Aspects – Legal Issues

Practical Aspects

• Organisation

Do people know how to react to a situation?

• As Soon As Possible:

– Inform key people (internal) – Ensure any persons attending the scene have “site briefing” and correct PPE – Who is going to oversee investigation? – Establish who will be involved in internal investigation – Understand role of witnesses/documents produced

• What is the role of the Liaison Person?

• Who will investigate and what powers do they have?

– Police have a duty to investigate a potential crime – HSE/Local Authorities have a duty to investigate H&S incidents

• Fatality

– Agreed protocol between Police/HSE – Police take the lead (Primacy) – When police have conducted their enquiries they hand over primacy to HSE – HSE have powers to release area/process for normal duty

Practical Aspects – Investigation Process (External)

Practical Aspects – Investigation Process (External)

• Interviews before commencement – confirmation of powers being

used is crucial

– Informal – Formal interview under S9 Criminal Justice Act (Voluntary) – S20 HSWA (Accompany person take notes) – PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984)

• Suspect?
• Legal representation

– Company representative

• Under caution?
• Right person?
• Legal Advice (benefit or not)

Practical Aspects – Investigation Process (Internal)

• Internal investigation required to comply with legal duty
• Emphasis – helping “management of H&S” and discovering

underlying causation

• Review and revise working practices/risk assessments
• Extract learning's from incident

Practical Aspects – Investigation Process (Internal)

• Investigation group

– Agree protocol regarding evidence required, interviewing people, viewing/taking of documents, taking/testing/analysing articles and substances – Agree protocol regarding effective means of identifying how and why accidents occurred and help prevent reoccurrences – Provide investigating officers with information about

• rganisation, process flow of material, workings of

relevant plant and equipment, details of who was at scene etc

Practical Aspects – Investigation Process (Internal)

• Investigation report/findings:

– Content – Interested parties

• Insurance company
• Litigation (personal injury/property etc.)
• Enforcement

The purpose of litigation and enforcement is to apportion blame!

Practical Aspects – Communication

• Interested parties:

– Senior people in your organisation – Family of the injured person – Employees – Trade union representatives – Shareholders – Legal/insurance advisors – Suppliers/customers – Media

Practical Aspects – Communication

• Press Release

– You cannot control the media but you can control media communication – Do not release details until next of kin informed

• Police/public authority may do this

– Content – brief and factual

• On-going – put in place a process to deal with

internal/external requests

Practical Aspects – Communication

• What the media will want to know:

– What happened? – Were there any deaths or injuries? – What is the extent of the damage? – Is there any danger or future injuries/damage? – Why did it happen? – Who or what is responsible? – What is being done about it? – When will it be over? – How it happened before – Where there any warning signs of the problem?

Subject to internal investigation – therefore likely to be no comment