NYC: Port Safety – Of Sorts
North Yorks Enquirer Harbours correspondent ALLAN ROBERTS reports on yet another salutary example of North Yorkshire Council staff benefitting from the time-honoured Council mantra “Lessons have been learned”.
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In April 2024, NYC Planning Department was found to have attached Planning Application Notices to the the handrails of the ladders used to access fishing vessels on Scarborough’s West Pier:
The Notices were attached to the handrails designed and installed to allow safe and secure access to and from the quayside. Quite often this access occurs in the dark, on unlit ladders, usually oily, and quite often by someone with cold wet and sometimes numb hands.
There is a potential risk of a person having a reflex recoil reaction to pull a hand away or failing to take an effective grip of the handrail for the purpose it was designed and intended to fulfil.
This could result in a fall which, in Health and Safety parlance, is described as “a fall from which death, or serious injury may result”.
Obviously (to a bear of very litttle brain), this was a blatant breach of Health & Safety requirements.
Fortunately, the risk attacehd to the Notices was brought to the attention of a qualified Harbour Stakeholder holding the appropriate Health & Safety Certification, which obliges that person to remove the Notices, under Code Order, to eliminate a potential hazard.
The removed Notices were duly placed into the safe-keeping of the Watchman in Port Control Office on West Pier, where (presumably) they would have been logged as a Health & Safety issue and brought to the attention of the Port Safety Code Management Committee, at their formal quarterly meetings.
All in all, a good outcome.
Except that on 10th December 2024, a Planning Application Notice was again attached to the very same access ladders.
Once again, the the Notices were removed by a person with Health & Saftey Certification which, as stated above, obliges that person to remove them.
Coincidently, it is only less than two weeks (in fact, on 29th November 2024) since NYC were presented with a Report on Harbour Safety under the following heading:
One may reasonably ask: “Is the Port Marine Safety Code worth the paper on which it is printed?”
Perhaps North Yorkskshire Council’s Corporate Director of Environment (inc. Harbours) Mr Karl Battersby can tell us?
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