Introduction to Subject

As a property owner, you are likely to seek the services of various tradesmen from time to time. Apart from finding the right person from quality and price perspectives, there are also responsibilities to consider, particularly concerning health and safety.

The term 'Contractor' may refer to an organisation or individual that contracts with another organisation or individual for a particular piece of work. Anyone brought in to work at the premises, who is not a direct employee of yours, will be a contractor.

A 'Subcontractor' is an individual or business that signs a contract to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract.

A Contractor could also be used to describe a Consultant, or professional who provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise.

What should you do to get the right contractor?

• Identify the job - clearly identify all aspects of the work you want the contractor to do, including work falling within the preparation and completion phases.
• Select a suitable contractor - satisfy yourself that contractors are competent (ie they have sufficient skills and knowledge) to do the job safely and without risks to health and safety. The degree of competence required will depend on the work to be done.
• Select a competent contractor - make sure contractors know and understand what performance you expect. You could ask what experience they have in the type of work you want done; what qualifications and skills they have; their selection procedure for sub-contractors; what health and safety training and supervision they provide; if they have any independent assessment of their competence; if they are members of a relevant trade or professional body.
• Ask for references - decide how much evidence you need to seek in support of what prospective contractors have told you.
• Select a suitable sub-contractor - The selection of any sub-contractors is probably best left to the contractor. You should however, satisfy yourself that a contractor has an effective procedure for appraising the competence of a sub-contractor.
• Provide information, instruction and training - clients, contractors and sub-contractors must provide their employees with information, instruction and training as appropriate to the size of the job. This is particularly important for anything which may affect their health and safety. All parties need to consider what information should be passed between them and agree appropriate ways to make sure this is done.
• Co-operation and co-ordination - In any client/contractor relationship, there must be co-operation and co-ordination between all the parties involved.
• Management and supervision  - you will need to decide what you need to do to effectively manage and supervise the work of contractors.

Health and Safety Responsibilities

Clients and contractors have general health and safety responsibilities to protect each other, their workforce and anyone else (eg visitors, people living nearby and other members of the public). Work undertaken for a client by a contractor is usually covered by a civil contract. It is good practice for health and safety requirements to be written in to such a contract. However, health and safety responsibilities are defined by the criminal law and cannot be passed on from one party to another by a contract.

If the contractor employs sub-contractors to carry out some or all of the work, all parties will again have some health and safety responsibilities. The extent of the responsibilities of each party will depend on the circumstances.

Although you are very unlikely to be proactively asked about these procedures by a Health and Safety Inspector, if an accident did occur at your property, it may be investigated.

Inspectors would look at:

• the person carrying out the work - were they following procedures?
• the employer - had they done all they could to prevent the situation?
• You - the client - what steps had you taken to ensure the contractor had taken all necessary action to prevent the accident?

Whoever is deemed to be in control is likely to take the major role, but there is deemed to be a joint responsibility and the individual circumstances would be looked at to determine any liability.

There may also be civil claims to contend with if the injured party or employer felt you were at fault.

Really, in summary, you need to show what is termed 'due diligence' and is basically that you have done everything that you 'reasonably' could do, to prevent the accident from occurring.

Lexton Property Services are currently working in partnership with PLANETPHiX. All repairs work is managed by PLANETPHiX.