West Stand "Holes" / Wall

Brave souls the lot of them. Type you would want in the trenches with you for their bravery.

 

That's not true. If you have less than 5 employees you don't even need a documented risk assessment.

The more people around a hazard mean that there is more chance someone can be hurt, so the fewer people the better. It's why we can only have so many people per steward, why the Metrodome can only have so many swimmers per lifeguard and why venues have attendance limits.
It's also different when the people around the hazard are employees of the club, and when they're members of the public.

 

If it is decided that one of your site's needs a specialist inspection such as deciding whether or not a brick wall is safe or not what kind of timeframe would you expect between identifying it needs inspecting and thus shutting down the site and actually getting it inspected? Is a month or two reasonable?

 

Such as the members of the public who can lean against the exterior of the wal right now?

 

It’s controlling the risk tbf. The media and Directors have refreshments and food given below the stand and work/sit only in specific areas.

The general public are more widespread and pose a slighter greater risk as there are less control mechanisms available.

 

The wall could presumably also fall on a dogless walker. Speaking as someone who walks without a dog, I am concerned by this

 

You have a duty of care to your employees.

 

You're less likely to go near it for a sniff and a pee though presumably!

 

Yeah I’d guess that could be a line. But if 1 person can fall down a hole for example we wouldn’t be exposing anyone to that risk. We work on a zero harm philosophy so we would just not use a building that was so damaged at the same time if we had an inspection and were told it was fine we would. I guess the devils in the detail that we are unlikely to know.

 

How do you know that?

 

it’s a difficult question as we have our own people but if for some reason they weren’t available I wouldn’t expect a timeframe that lasted much beyond 5 working days but hard to say as we would always have internal resource whereas the club wouldn’t.

 

I don't know why everyone is arguing with me. All I said was that the more people around a hazard, the more likely someone is to be hurt and for that reason you keep the numbers as low as possible. In an ideal world you keep it to zero, but we have a responsibility to the EFL to provide for directors (home and away) and media.
We need ball boys and club staff to be in there.
It's not a defence of the abysmal communication by the club, just a rational discussion about why directors and club employees are allowed in there but fans aren't.
I get that it's extremely emotional for people who've had to move or get their season tickets refunded, and I sympathise with them and agree that the way the club appear to have handled this is poor at best, but to keep saying that directors are invincible because they're allowed in there is nonsense.

 

If no one was allowed to be in the West Stand, there wouldn't be any matches going on.

 

Again I get that but it’s hard to get my head round exposing 100s of people to risk. Couldn’t the exec suite be used as a temp location for most with a temp structure for media ?

 

Possibly, but would that mean uprooting other people elsewhere in the ground as well?
I know it's probably not the most relevant example, but we let 100s of network rail employees on the train tracks every day, but we wouldn't let one member of the public.

 

Yeah reasonable example but I assume they would wear safety gear etc and have a briefing pre work etc. I mean the people still using the West Stand aren’t in the main employees of the club.

I get that they wouldn’t want to inconvenience the exec people but surely health and safety comes first?

 

It seems to me, that the closing of the Stand was the correct decision, and was a brave call.

What has been poor, has been the communication behind it.

 

This is true pal.