Union serves notice on UK Government to improve safety at civil service office block

Martin Shipton

A trade union has used a little-known procedure to force the UK Government to improve safety conditions at one of its biggest office blocks in Wales.

Last month Nation.Cymru reported how Ty Taf, a 133,000 square foot Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) building housing 1,600 staff at Nantgarw near Cardiff, had been shut less than four years after being opened.

Ty Taf, located at the Treforest Industrial Estate, was designed to use efficient solar-powered technology that reduces its impact on the environment. It also has electric vehicle charging points for staff.

The project was delivered by Cardiff-based property development firm Rightacres – responsible for a series of new developments in Cardiff city centre – with its funding partner L&G.

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Structural problems

However, staff reported how the block had experienced a succession of structural problems since being opened.

A report compiled by health and safety reps from the PCS union told how on Friday July 11 two windows shattered for no apparent reason, one on the third floor and one on the fourth floor.

Eighteen months earlier, a window had shattered and the facilities manager had said it was a bird strike, but the people sitting by this window on the second floor had denied this was the case.

The report said: “Everyone was assured they were safe by the SRO [senior responsible owner – a civil service term denoting the manager in charge of a project] as they were designed to remain intact and would not fall out. People who were parked under one of the windows were told it was safe to remove their cars.

“No dynamic risk assessment was done prior to making this statement. On the Sunday the window that wouldn’t break on the fourth floor fell out shattering all over the area where people’s cars had been previously parked. A message went out to staff stating the main car park would be closed whilst they assessed the situation, but the office was safe so staff could go in.

“ …Previously they told us the issue of doors not opening including fire doors was due to the wind and the amount of rain had caused the previous floods and the leaking windows since the building opened was due to rain. So apparently this building is not built to withstand Welsh weather. We asked them before it was built not to build on a flood plain and they ignored PCS and Natural Resources Wales.”

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Tremors

Staff remained concerned and complained about tremors felt on the fourth floor. The report said: “Monitors were placed there for a week and the office was told there are tremors but they are within the allowable range. Staff who felt these tremors were not informed of this.

“On Friday July 18 we were invited at short notice to a meeting and told that they would be putting up Heras fencing around the perimeter of the building and scaffolding tunnels for fire evacuations and that the fire evacuation routes would be changed because of this. There was no fire risk assessment done and no consultation. PCS were informed. None of our suggestions were listened to or considered and no reasons were given why PCS were not listened to.”

Staff were, however, allowed to work from home.

Union Improvement Notice

Frustrated by what its reps saw as the management’s intransigent attitude, the union decided to issue a Union Improvement Notice (UIN) to the building’s managers.

A UIN is a formal notice issued to a manager by an accredited trade union safety representative. It registers that the employer is not complying with health and safety legislation in respect of an identified workplace hazard, describes the action which must be taken to comply with the law and specifies a date by which action must be taken

Before issuing a UIN in relation to a hazard, the safety representative must be convinced of four things: that there is a breach of health and safety law; that the breach has been brought to the attention of the employer in a proper manner through agreed channels; that the manager has failed to respond appropriately within a reasonable time; that the matter is not already the subject of enforcement action by HSE or local authority inspectors.

Guidance issued by the TUC states: “The issuing of a UIN is a serious matter. It is a sign that the normal machinery for resolving health and safety problems at work has failed.”

UINs are not the same as statutory improvement notices issued by the Health and Safety Executive, but employers who ignore them could find themselves in trouble if anything subsequently went wrong.

The UIN issued to the management of Ty Taf specified in considerable detail the health and safety regulations the PCS believed had been broken.

We asked the DWP to respond to the union’s concerns.

A spokesperson for the DWP responded: "We take staff and customer safety seriously. The site reopened today after being declared safe.”