Welfare, a pregnancy and an apprentice on a cold Monday
You take over as site manager on a 40-week refurbishment of a 1960s residential block in mid-January, two weeks into the programme. Forty-six operatives from five subcontractors are on site. The outgoing manager left no handover. Your walk-round finds: two portable toilets for 46 people, one of them blocked; the canteen water supply is a bowser that has frozen, so there is no hot water and no drinking water; no drying room; the only rest area is a 20ft container with one fan heater and twelve seats. A pregnant groundworker is breaking out floor slabs behind a running generator. A 17-year-old apprentice has been left alone to use a bench saw. There is no record of the workforce being consulted about anything since the job started.
1. Set out what welfare the Regulations require, what you sequence first, and what you do in the 48 hours before a permanent fix arrives.
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The required facilities are: sanitary conveniences, washing facilities with hot and cold (or warm) water, soap and drying, drinking water, changing and drying facilities, rest facilities with seating and heating, and facilities for eating meals.
Apply that to the facts:
- Toilets: the Regulations do not give a number, HSE guidance does - roughly one per seven people. One working unit for 46 is indefensible on hygiene grounds alone.
- Water: no drinking water and no hot water is an immediate, non-negotiable failure, and it is worse in January when hands are cold and dirty from slab breaking.
- Drying and rest: a single heater and twelve seats for 46 people in mid-winter means wet clothing, cold workers and people taking breaks in their work areas.
Sequencing in the first 48 hours: drinking water and hand-washing first (health), toilets close behind (hygiene and dignity), then heated rest and drying. Realistic interim control is to hire towable welfare units with toilets, hot water, drying and seating, plus bottled water, and to record the hire order and delivery time. If you genuinely cannot provide drinking water and washing, you stop the work that needs them - that is a proportionate decision, not an overreaction. Do not 'manage' it with a kettle and a bucket.
2. How do you deal with the pregnant groundworker and the 17-year-old apprentice, and what approaches would be wrong?
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Pregnant worker: once she has notified you in writing, you review the risk assessment for her work. If the assessment shows a risk to her or the baby, you adjust her hours or conditions; if that is not possible, you offer suitable alternative work on the same terms; only if that is also not possible do you suspend her on full pay. Breaking slabs behind a running generator raises vibration, noise, exhaust fume and manual handling questions - those are reasons to review, not reasons to ban her from site. The wrong move is either a blanket exclusion ('too risky, go home') or doing nothing on the basis that she is 'only early on'. One is discriminatory, the other is a breach.
17-year-old: he is a young person, so he needs a risk assessment before he starts work, must not be given work beyond his competence, and must not do work involving significant risk unless it is necessary for his training and he is supervised by a competent person. Alone on a bench saw fails all three tests at once. Stop it immediately, put him with a competent mentor, verify the guarding on the saw, confirm what training and authorisation he has, and record the decision. He can still be on site and still be learning - just not unsupervised on rotating machinery.
3. What are the legal hooks for workforce consultation here, and how do you make it real rather than a paper exercise?
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The duty comes from the general duty to consult employees on matters affecting their health and safety. How you do it depends on whether recognised trade unions are involved: safety representatives appointed by a recognised union, or, where there are none, consultation directly with employees or through representatives elected for the purpose. The Regulations changed in 2025 - check which set currently applies and whether your representatives were elected under the right regime. Subcontractors' workers need a route in too.
Making it real:
- Consult before decisions, not after. Announcing a completed change at a toolbox talk is information, not consultation.
- Give it a structure: named representatives, a monthly committee with minutes, an action log with owners and dates, and a visible response to every item.
- Use the people who see the risk: the slab breakers knew there was no hot water before you did. A route that only carries management messages downwards is not consultation.
For this site specifically, the first consultation item is the welfare plan, because the workforce has direct knowledge of what is and is not working, and the second is the interim arrangements you are putting in place this week.