DLR's health and safety nonsense
I've been selling poppies again this year at Canary Wharf DLR station to the early morning commuters and I'm proud to say that we've been doing a roaring trade. Every year, credit crunch or not, I've been truly impressed by how generous Wharfers are. But I wonder how many know just how much bureaucracy there is involved in being allowed to stand there?
To sell poppies we have to get special permission from Serco which runs the DLR.
It has to undertake a Health and Safety risk assessment and provide a safety briefing for non-trackside work at a DLR station.
Then every day we have to report to the Serco office at Poplar DLR station to sign in before we can start selling our poppies.
Once we have signed in we then have to travel back to Canary Wharf to start selling. When we have finished we have to sign out.
We have to go through all this pointless health and safety nonsense just to sell poppies - an activity that involves no more risk than ordinary everyday life.
Contrast this with the lack of adequate health and safety observance that led to the tragic and avoidable death of 16 servicemen flying in an RAF Nimrod plane above Afghanistan.
They were serving their country, the least they should have expected was that basic health and safety, where it was so crucially needed, was adhered to.
- Tim Archer is Conservative councillor, Blackwall & Cubitt Town Ward & prospective MP
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