The importance of health and safety

One of the things that we are most proud of at MIH is our attention to detail and in particular to the requirements of health and safety. After the horror of Grenfell in June of last year, we became even more committed to ensuring that our buildings are compliant but perhaps more importantly the safest they can be.

Conducting a full review

From the moment we start managing, and in some cases before, we undertake a full review of the building and in particular look at how we can mitigate the risks to human life. We would be the first to admit that the legislation is a minefield and in order to provide the best advice to our clients we always recommend that at an independent assessment be carried out.

We are aware that some larger firms have in house health and safety officers and carry out their own reports and were recently asked by a new property why we didn’t do the same. We took some time to consider our response and felt that our reasons for keeping this independent were something that we should explain and share.

Our role is managing your property

For us at MIH, we believe our role in managing your property is to ensure that you have the best and most current advice and we admit that our failing would be that with the volume of other work we are involved in at your property we cannot always do so. You would think that with this in mind, it would lend MIH, (who are consistently thinking about ways in which to improve our services to our owners,) to take the next logical step and to employ a dedicated health and safety Bod! Truly it was something that our Director considered but was quickly reminded by us of some of the examples of properties which MIH had taken over in the last year, who had this arrangement and was quickly dismissed.

Notwithstanding the above, and never ones to stand still we decided to talk to Joanne at Tetra about the benefits of keeping this service independent, particularly as MIH are using their PRISM system which always keeps MIH staff on their toes by encouraging them to habitually update their health and safety records.

Sufficient training and competence

As a rule of thumb, the regulations require that assistance must be sought from a “Competent Person” to meet the requirements of the legislation. This person should be someone who has sufficient training and experience or knowledge that allow them to provide the appropriate advice.

We would never go so far as suggesting that the staff at MIH are not “Competent Person (s) and we think we might have a mass walk out if we suggested this. We can, however emphatically state that we can only rely on our own experiences and most definitely cannot call upon the vast resources and expertise that an independent consultant who has specialised in this field for many years can. We know we can’t be expert in everything and for MIH, providing the best advice for our clients is a MUST, particularly in something that could put lives at risk.

Independent vs in-house

Our verdict on independent vs in house remains pretty much the same- MIH will always focus on what they are best at, managing your property using the best advice available. This coupled with the regular reminders means that there is no longer a sole “Competent Person” but a whole host of MIH staff with back up who take this role seriously on your behalf.

In order to ensure that our clients receive the best and most current advice we look to have an mind.

Our Services

Residential Management

Block Management

Commercial Property Management