Cellar safety – not just for Christmas
The Cellar Safety Programme enhances basic safety practices in cellars, cold rooms and across all areas of bars, restaurants, hotels and pubs.
The programme was designed to address safety issues arising from serious accidents in bar cellars across Europe in recent years.
It’s the first of its kind in Ireland and aims to improve safety in the workplace environment for thousands of workers/service providers and hospitality sector customers.
By helping bars to protect their staff and meet legal requirements to ensure their workplace is a safe place in which to operate, the new safety programme can be accessed through Besmart.ie, the HSA’s existing online risk assessment tool.
This contains a wide range of risk assessments for various licensed operators and uses a simple four-step process to guide participants in assessing the status of safety features within their premises.
The IBA hopes that the initiative will benchmark health & safety standards for all licensed operators in Europe.
“BeSmart.ie is quick and easy to use and will give bar managers an idea of how safe their cellars are and if any safety issues need to be addressed,” said IBA Head Jonathan McDade, speaking at the launch of the programme.
Within the IBA Tech Group there’s over 100 years’ experience in the Brewing/Tech industry, added Ian Reidy, Chair of the Tech Committee.
“It’s vital that we share this knowledge with all its stakeholders to ensure a safe place of work for the outlets’ employees and for the service providers to the sector,” he said.
Also speaking at the launch, Martin O’Dea, Senior Inspector in the Health & Safety Authority, pointed out, “It will make pubs, restaurants and hotels safer to work in and will reduce the likelihood of costly law suits that can easily be avoided. We’d urge all licensed operators to use BeSmart.ie to create a safer working environment.”
