"Sacha" wrote in message
.uk...
On 16/12/05 11:52 am, in article ,
"Kay
Easton" wrote:

In message , Sacha
writes
A Healthy & Safety form arrived today which made us laugh. Questions -
to
a nursery where everyone works either outdoors or in large glasshouses:
"how many of your workers smoke; do you set aside a special area for
your
workers to smoke?" I'm not quite sure that 'back of the bonfire sites'
is
what they're looking for as an answer. ;-)

But look at it from their pov. Imagine the administrative cost of
designing a different form for each class of enterprise, finding out
which category every business fell in to, and then making sure you sent
the right form.

But Kay, why do they need to know that our employees smoke, don't smoke or
have places in which to smoke? Whose business is it but ours and that of
our employees and customers? And nobody smokes near customers.
It's just more nanny state-ing, IMO and an explanation of why the numbers
of civil servants rise year after year. They're all thinking up new
forms,
sending them out, gathering them back in, sending out reminders to those
who
haven't returned them, reading them and THEN passing them on to someone
else
to read, stamp, add up and pass on to yet another department. I think
it's
intrusive and patronising! Unless they're going to pass a law *insisting*
that employers provide smoking rooms for people who usually work outdoors,
I
can't imagine what the point of this doubtlessly expensive exercise was!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

As Kay said it's a generalised form.The data,at a guess, will be used for
statistical processing.
Subsequently it will probably be used to make further decisions about
"Smoking in the Workplace" legislation.
Health and Safety act applies to everyone.

I trust your Coshh assessment is current and has recently been audited:-)