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Stuart Phillips

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Everything posted by Stuart Phillips

  1. Stuart Phillips
    Its worth looks at the lists of quals in the ACOP, as they have the quals for high risk operations as well as lower risk operations.
  2. Stuart Phillips
    Spot on Paul. The PUWER ACOP "gives practical advice on how to comply with the law. If you follow the advice in the ACOP you will be doing enough to comply with the law in respect of those specific matters on which the Code gives advice." ( the quals are listed in para 137 for those that want to see what are considered high risk operations) The ACOP says, "a worker should have received appropriate training and obtained a relevant certificate of competence or national qualification". In case of prosecution, the questions are 'What training was received', and 'how recently'.
  3. Stuart Phillips
    With all these things, the term "license to practice" is a little misleading. As has been said, the ticket doesn't define the skill set, it only serves to show that at a given time, on the day, to the satisfaction of the assessor, you met the standard required. Within the legislation, there is no requirement for any qualification to do any of these tasks. The requirement is that the operative is "adequately trained", and the qualification is usually taken as a way of demonstrating this. However, if the industry has moved on, and the qualification content not kept pace, as might be seen to be the case over the use of SRT, does the qualification always indicate that the person was 'adequately trained'? And yes, when there is a issue, you want everyone to be up to date on aerial rescue!
  4. Stuart Phillips
    Sound advice. Up-skilling, by doing additional training or qualification, such as felling over 380mm, Windblow etc. will be accepted as 'refreshing' previous skills. Plenty of folk offering one day refresher training to cover maintenance, crosscutting and felling. I am always a little worried where there are claims to have covered too much in a single day, as it suggests that it may not have been too thorough. If you are planning on applying for a LISS/CSCS card with your refresher certificate, its worth checking on their website (through the BALI site) as to which refreshers they will recognise.
  5. Stuart Phillips
    I see that its nominated for 'Tree of the Year' on the Woodland Trust website (England's Tree of the Year - Woodland Trust)
  6. Stuart Phillips
    Lets hope that there won't be the need for us all to see how they perform in the wet at APF. Setting aside the obvious, we spend a lot of time worrying about hard hats and the like, but footwear is the 'unsung hero', given that most of us spend all day wearing some form of footwear. Comfy, dry warm feet are an essential.
  7. Stuart Phillips
    Don't know about logs, but you might talk to local allotment associations ( contact the local authority allotments officer who can give you contact details). I did a deal where I used to have an allotment, so that 2 or 3 local arborists could tip wood chips on site. The allotments used them for surfacing paths and to add to compost heaps to balance the amount of green material they generated.
  8. Stuart Phillips
    I will be there all three days, some of that on the Lantra stand in the HSE marquee (1800 in). The tea urn will be on if you want o call in and say 'hello'. Mind you, if you'd rather talk to my colleagues from the other side (C&G NPTC), they are in the HSE marquee as well.
  9. Stuart Phillips
    The 'buzz' phrase of the moment is 'Point of work risk assessment'. That is to say, the site specific risk assessment may be done prior to the job being undertaken, possibly when it is priced. The Point of work assessment is done on site, on the day, immediately before starting work ( and should take about 10 minutes), by the working team. A quick Google search will chuck out a number of examples, including one on the HSE website (http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/engagement/taskcard.pdf), though prettier ones are available.
  10. Stuart Phillips
    Standard allotment plot sizes are 5 pole (1/2 plot) and10 pole (full plot), a pole being five and a half yards. To put it an easier way, a 10 pole plot is about 250 square metres. Be aware that there will be some allotment holders who are, or try to be 'green' ( in the nicest possible way. There is usually some grief from individuals who didn't want Roundup anywhere near their plot.
  11. Stuart Phillips
    A quick couple of thoughts C&G NPTC is a multinational business and may wish to protect its brand image. The usual take such cases is a letter asking for such signs to be removed and a veiled hint at legal actions. I suspect that the C&G response wouldn't be a million miles away from that. In the UK, there is, of course, no legal requirement for certification. The requirement is for adequate training. From that point of view, all the 'Qualified Arborist' badges in the world are irrelevant. And, if you want to start to nudge out the white van man with a chainsaw, sign up to the Register of Treework Operatives (R2). It will only work as an industry initiative if there is a critical mass signed on to the system. It does evidence, training, qualifications and, picking up on the point made about college leavers, on specific experience.
  12. Stuart Phillips
    You could give Dorothy Sumner at One Ash Training (One Ash Training - Arboricultural, Agricultural, Horticultural Training Courses, North West) a call. They are based at Widnes, but an easy run from the top of the county
  13. Stuart Phillips
    Have a look at the ABC Level 4 diploma, with the possibility of doing the Level 6 professional diploma after that. It might be worth a call to Keely Dowson at Treelife, who can give you all the ins and outs of these two and let you know the centres where they deliver the courses, as well as an indication on costs etc.
  14. Stuart Phillips
    The new trailblazer apprenticeships in arb and horticulture will be available in 2017. Ignoring the usual assumption that they are only for 16-17 year olds, they may offer a route for you as you are already gainfully employed. Both will be offered at Level 2, but the hortic team are also developing a level 3 route.
  15. Stuart Phillips
    Some of us still think in feet and inches, but draw the link at chains, links, rods etc. The offer of both ITA and independent assessment routes comes from the great debate when the new quals were introduced in 2011-12. Some folk were convinced that independent assessment was the only acceptable route and said that the forestry and arb industries would never accept anything else... so a belt and braces approach was adopted to offer both. Thing is that the skills cards and certificates are the same in both cases. That being the case, as you rightly say, most will compare the cost, think about the potential delays in having to bring in a separate assessor, then opt for the integrated assessment. The key is for the awarding bodies (Lantra and C&G) to do their quality assurance; and if the quality assurance processes are not followed, it doesn't matter whether you have integrated assessment or 'independent'.
  16. Stuart Phillips
    Yes, sorry, over 380mm is right... I think the brain was overheating. And there was definitively a trick missed when the quals all changed as it is much easier to say "CS 30/31" rather than the "level 2 Award in Chainsaw maintenance, crosscutting and felling upto 380mm". The CS units may have gone... but I fear that it will be a long time before they are forgotten given the alternative snappy titles
  17. Stuart Phillips
    Whether you go down the Lantra or the NPTC route, there is independent assessment. Felling to 380mm shouldn't be available as an ITA. The confusion sits with the definition of 'independent assessment'. The requirement here is that the assessment is separated from the training, NOT that the assessor is separate from the trainer. So dig a little deeper and make sure that the 'ticket' you will end up with is the regulated qual.
  18. Stuart Phillips
    The Lantra brushcutter certificate is an ITA, although there is a regulated qualification in the pipeline. The legal requirement (PUWER) is, as always, in the training but as there is increasing demand for a qualification, we are moving to meet that requirement. And, there are no plans for Lantra to merge with NPTC. As many will know, Lantra formed originally as the National Training Organisation for land based, and then through the various morphings ended up as the Sector Skills Council and as an awarding organisation. (If you accept all the name changes, tweaks etc. the organisation is basically 50 next month - happy birthday to us!). The concern with the focus on qualifications is that there are some training providers who will teach people just enough to pass the assessments, where as the training should be more rounded.
  19. Stuart Phillips
    The PTI course assessment is tough, and justifiably so. However, you are quite right in saying that it must also be fair, and be seen to be fair. There is an appeal procedure, via the Quality Services team at Lantra, who will have the assessment reviewed.
  20. Stuart Phillips
    For a little support whilst unable to work it may be worth a call to Perennial (0800 093 8543 - Ways We Can Help | Perennial). They have been prominent at the Arb Show in the last couple of years to promote that they offer help to Arbs as well as hortics.
  21. Stuart Phillips
    Have a look on the Lantra Website under 'AWARDS' then search on 'Chainsaw maintenance' to bring up the list of courses and qualifications. You can then filter the list of training providers by area and travelling distance (Provider search | Lantra)
  22. Stuart Phillips
    If you go through the Lantra website, or contact Mandy Hollis in Sales at Lantra (02476 696996 ex 248), you can get details of the training providers in your area who run the courses. You would then need to contact them directly for dates.
  23. Stuart Phillips
    I have just had cause to look through the generic risk assessments for a commercial arb company, as a part of another job I was doing. These were revised in December 2014, but I found that all the references to AFAG guides and qualifications were out of date. The CS units referred to having ceased to be current in 2012, and more than half the AFAG guides now having gone over to FISA. I suspect that the revision in this case was just a change of date at the bottom of each page. It did make me wonder how much more of the content was out of date and many more risk assessments there are out there which, having had the same 'lick and promise' approach to updating, could come back and haunt the company if there is an accident.
  24. Stuart Phillips
    Windblow is high on my to do list. (The workbook has been done but I'm trying to source better images at the moment). I will have a look at the certification of the training on it as, although I take the point that in this case unassessed training is a waste of time, if someone is being "passed" on the training it implies that they are ready for assessment, but if they didn't understand the winching forces they clearly weren't.
  25. Stuart Phillips
    Not at all. The fact that most are comes from them being qualified prior to 2012. Then the only way was NPTC As for the move to independent assessors, that's a whole different discussion. If I train you, and my business partner assesses you. You pass and I can advertise that my business boasts a high success rate...was it independent assessment? Never happens like that of course

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