Specialist Event Advisor Warns Event Businesses They Face Heavy Fines & Prosecution
Event managers and company directors are risking prosecution and heavy fines because they do not allow for their many liabilities when organising an event warns Alison McDougall, managing director of Relevant Risk.
“It’s not just about ticking a few compliance boxes. Any event, however small, has to allow for a multitude of legislation and a failure in any one of these can mean fines, Director disqualification or even jail,” says McDougall.
A man died when dismantling a marquee In Gloucestershire. Last year, a coroners report blamed all three companies involved in the event – the venue, the marquee company and the company whose event it was. Commented McDougall: “If one of the employees on-site had been appropriately knowledgeable, and knew how to apply their knowledge, it is likely this tragic accident would never have happened. But they all assumed it was each other’s responsibility! Employees need know-how not just knowledge.”
All events have to comply with laws covering disability discrimination, data protection, working time regulations, manual handling, PUWER, COSHH, insurance and much more. According to McDougall: “We have recently seen a worrying number of companies who just don’t understand their liabilities and as a result are at real risk Ignorance is not an acceptable defence in law. And you cannot transfer your liability, even with a contract in place, so it’s no good saying it was your supplier’s responsibility or the events. It is also pointless having your H&S and other compliance paperwork in the office if those on the ground don’t understand what has to be done when they’re on site.”
This month, Relevant Risk has launched a new online service to help companies through the legal minefield of event organisation. Companies and individual employees can take part in a “Knowledge Audit” for a low cost assessment of their knowledge and resources. They will also receive a report with recommendations and guidelines.
Relevant Risk is increasingly working with smaller manager owned companies who don’t have numerous in-house experts standing alongside to help wade through legislation. Its web site offers free advice and information through an online Knowledge Hub including regular updates on legislation, events and training.
Category: Event Law & Legal
About the Author (Author Profile)
Adam Parry is the editor for Event Industry News. If you would like to get in touch and learn more about Event Industry News email editor@eventindustrynews.co.uk.Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
.jpg)
These are valuable points. Far too little attention is paid to health & safety on the ground when running events. As a staging, seating & auditoria supplier we are all too aware of companies that are letting standards slide, and of event managers who don’t know what to look out for. We’ve set up a blog to address this, aimed at empowering event managers to identify between good and bad health and safety practice:
http://www.steeldeck.co.uk/blog/
There’s not a lot happening on the steeldeck blog Sam – three incomplete posts in eight months, why promote it if it’s not being maintained?
As a supplier, how do you tackle poor practices by your clients when you see it?
Thanks for bringing that to my attention Darren as some glitch/hack
seems to have eaten its way through our posts! These have now been re-posted here: http://www.steeldeck.co.uk/blog/
We’re building a pool of event safety experts to contribute to our blog and there will be more regular posts in the near future.
As we’re interested in
contributing to the dialogue around the safety of temporary structures at
events we had to comment on this welcome article, despite being a
fledgling blog ourselves.
But to answer your question,
we do several things to tackle poor practice:
1. When we build we do things properly.
2. At an early stage we encourage risk assessment and advise people of how
we would do things.
3. We point people towards relevant publications particularly the
Institute of Structural Engineers Guide to Temporary Demountable
Structures and refer to some of the salient points within it, like the
note about all stages needing guardrail and lack of guardrail being one of
the biggest causes of accidents.
4. We politely refuse to do some things.
5. We try to advise people of sensible process.
What’s your interest? are you a supplier, client, event manager?