Gosha celebrates 20 years of promoting health and safety
LACK of awareness of health and safety by Guernsey businesses led to three islanders deciding to set up a group to raise awareness of the issues – the Guernsey Occupational Safety and Health Association, or Gosha.
This year sees Gosha celebrate its 20th birthday and, with this being Safety and Health at Work Week, it is holding three talks and a celebratory dinner.
Chairman Andrew Mills was an insurance underwriter and he and two friends who also had an awareness of workplace health were concerned.
‘First of all, people weren’t even aware that there was a law in Guernsey covering health and safety.’
He said he was shocked when he was told this by three different businesses.
‘On top of that there were some very poor practices as well, even for people who respected the law, and there were some silly accidents and unnecessary ones, and there were also too many accidents happening.’
As a result of this realisation, Mr Mills, Richard Pinchemain and Terry Nash set up Gosha.
Since then the association has provided regular meetings and talks from experts, subject specialists and training providers.
Initial feedback the trio received at first was generally positive but some people thought it might prove shortlived.
‘We didn’t have really negative feedback,’ said Mr Mills.
‘All we had was “It’s not going to last”. In fact, my boss told me at the time: “It won’t last more than six months.”’
While Gosha has no connection with the Health and Safety executive he said it had a close relationship with it. H&S inspector Matt Coggins said health and safety was covered by The Factories Act until a new ordinance was brought in locally in 1987, 13 years after the UK.
The major difference between the two was that while the Factories Act gave inspectors the power to instruct companies to abide by the law, the new law put the onus on companies to follow inspectors’ recommendations.
'The Factories Act was quite proscriptive, whereas the ordinance said “it’s your risk, you’re best placed to manage it.”
‘Inspections are still carried out, but when we go somewhere we say, ‘show us your risk assessments”.’
He said Gosha was a useful buffer between the employers and the executive as the enforcement body.
Mr Mills said Mr Coggins and his colleagues often attended Gosha meetings to talk about the issues faced by companies in the island and the sort of actions that needed to be taken, including a briefing recently on scaffolding safety.
But recommended measures were not supposed to be onerous, said Mr Coggins. ‘It’s always qualified by the term “reasonably practicable”. So it’s sensible, proportionate response to hazards and risk management.
‘It’s not about going over the top to try to manage something that’s a trivial risk, or something that’s not necessarily likely to manifest itself again.’
