The law surrounding health and safety practices can be complex and difficult to understand. To help keep your store compliant, ACS has produced a comprehensive Assured Advice guide for ‘Managing Health and Safety’ to lead you through the health and safety procedures you need to carry out in your store.
ACS’ Assured Advice guide on ‘Managing Health and Safety’ (which can be viewed here: http://www.acs.org.uk/advice/healthandsafety/) contains an overview of the risks and hazards your store will face on a day-to-day basis. Health and Safety can refer to anything which could potentially cause an accident in store, from a customer tripping over loose cables, or slipping on wet floors, to the falling of badly stacked products onto a member of staff.
Also within the guide are detailed explanations of the types of risk assessments that you as a store owner and/or manager need to carry out on a regular basis. Risk assessments are essential to the running of your convenience store as they are a way of preventing accidents and ill health in the work place by minimising or eliminating certain risks.
There is an easy-to-follow, pictorial walk through of the safe handling and lifting of goods and boxes. This will be essential to show your employees to help prevent them from injuring themselves or causing accidents, as around a third of all workplace accidents reported are as a result of poor manual handling.
The ACS Assured Advice guide on ‘Managing Health and Safety’ also contains information about: reporting accidents, using roll cages correctly, using in store equipment safely, first aid, electrical safety and maintenance, and additional links to other useful material.
ACS provides Assured Advice guidance on a variety of other topics, including: Tobacco Display Ban, Underage Sales, Fire Safety, Fireworks, Product Safety, Food Safety and Hygiene, Weights and Measures, and Fair Trading.
Assured Advice has been developed for convenience store owners by ACS and Surrey County Council. By signing up to ACS’ Assured Advice scheme and following the guidance, your store’s procedures must be respected by ALL local enforcement officers including environmental health, police and trading standards – but you must sign up to the scheme to benefit from this privilege.
Assured Advice is free for full members of ACS – to find out more about becoming a full member, please contact us on 01252 515001 or visit the ACS website: http://www.acs.org.uk/assured-advice/.
