SEAMS News Archives

Health and Safety Reminder

We are actively checking at our events to see if non members attending have the appropriate insurance cover (currently £5 million), and taking a closer look at all the exhibits to make sure they are safe to run.

SEAMS members ar very good at this and have some excellent displays and are well maintained.  There is nothing new here but we do need to be a little more vigilant for all our sakes.

We now seem to live in a world where common sense is not encouraged and people therefore think that everything is automatically safe, so now that’s the way we have to make it.  Just because we have our individual club insurance doesn’t mean we can relax at any time regarding safety.

Every event we do has to have a Risk Assessment in place covering all potential hazards and kept on file for future reference.

If you are asked move or re position your exhibit by the person in charge or safety officer, please don’t take offence, he is just doing his job and trying to make the event as safe fr everyone as possible.

Due diligence is a word often mentioned in association with Insurance companies and if all the rules are not followed that they have dictated, then cover could be deemed null and void.

Where the general public are involved, one has to be extra vigilant because they probably will not be aware of the potential dangers of being near moving machinery so letting then the other side of the ropes for a better view or a better photo is not acceptable. Another thing to keep an eye on is keeping young children from reaching our exhibit’s. it can sometimes be a challenge especially when the accompanying adult/s tend to be blissfully unaware of their child’s natural interests in spinning flywheels or moving belts and trying to get beyond the barriers fora better look!

I have also seen in the past exhibitors children playing around running engines (not at our events I hasten to add) surely an accident waiting to happen and what would the aftermath be like if something went wrong! Fortunately, I believe this sort of thing doesn’t happen too often but it is an example of the things we all need to look out for.

Something else that is worthy of a mention is leaving your engine and going off for a look around, no problem with that if it is turned off, but if you intend to leave it running make sure someone has been made responsible for it in your absence, please make sure this person knows exactly how to run it and be able to turn if off in the event of something going wrong, i.e engine speed increasing rapidly, mechanical failure or just not running as it should.

As we all know, there are many different types of engines and they have controls that may not be familier to all of us so making sure the person left in charge neds to be aware of how his responsibility works.

We can’t all be experts on all of them, I apologise forgoing over what might seem obvious to you the experienced exhibitor, but from what I occasionally see is worthy of a mention!

Please ensure that you have with you your up-to-date membership and insurance card when attending events.

There will be available to all a copy of the requirements from the NFU Insurance Policy (6 pages long).  We have yet to decide how best to get this to you and this is still to be discussed at the next committee meeting.  I will report the final decision in the next newsletter.

This is an interesting hobby and SEAMS is a great club supported by very friendly, helpful and knowledgeable group of people, lets all work to keep it this way for years to come.

Paul Cook