Lift broken at work

[Mitara]

The lift has been broken in my workplace for the last month.

The employer said he has been waiting for a part that he ordered.

However i have heard him moan about the cost of getting the lift fixed. He said that it will cot him thousands of pounds to get it fixed . He wont be paying for it out of his own pocket. It will come out of company money, but he just doesnt like paying for it.

The lift being broken has resulted in me and other members of staff having to walk up and down a lot of stairs more for normal tasks, and we are also having to do heavy lifting up and down stairs. I honestly feel like im going to collapse.

Is there any law or workplace safety regulation that states that an emloyer must get a lift fixed, if not having a lift is causing health and safety risks to employees.

I was trying to look it up last night but havent found anything specific yet. I would love to find something specific and show it to him

yanbu
there are scaffolding/building lifts that could be installed temporarily if only to get materials up and down.
and people in an emergency!

has there been a fire assessment at all?
hse and environmental health might be good places to go to.
also pals if in any way affiliated to nhs

God i would have hated to be staff in that place

My husband is a lift engineer, there is currently a 3 months backlog on some items he needs to fix lifts and then say if a care home lift is broken over an office lift. The care home will get priority, so it could be that one part comes in and even though the office has waited a month and the care home a week, the care home will get priority

The care home didnt get priority in the care home example used above by another poster

I understand there is a waiting time for lift parts.

But i still feel that my manager is also delaying getting it fixed. He doesnt have to any heavy lifting so he doesnt care. And i keep hearing him say that he needs yo save money, and fixing the lift is so expensive

I can’t speak on other companies, but the one my husband works at prioritises

Well that is good that his company prioritises care homes.

If it’s a hospital just contact the Health and Safety Department and they’ll come and do a risk assessment.

Its not a hospital or anything related to the NHS.

Sorry I'm not being too specific, but I think it is not good to give any identifying details about an employer online.

It's a private owned company.

If this was me I don't think I'd mind too much because I enjoy exercise and stairs are fantastic for cardiovascular fitness.
But I would make sure I wasn't carrying things in a way that might cause injuries.

Has he compared the cost of lift repairs with recruiting new staff when people resign?

However, he probably can't resolve the wait for parts issue.

I agree there should be an updated risk assessment though.

I read this as “life broken at work” and was intrigued.

off to Specsavers 🚶‍♀️

OP you have my full sympathy - I don’t know if there’s any law or not but I’m trying to leave my current job due to a number of issues, one of them being similar to yours. I’m leaving work feeling physically exhausted.

If you all suspect it just isn’t getting fixed, I’d slow it down so that it hits them in their targets. That’s the only way employers understand.

In fairness to the boss, lifts needing parts does always seem to be accompanied by extremely long delays from the maintenance companies. So he may very well be telling the truth about that.

You need to make sure all incidents are registered in the accident book, which all workplaces with more than 10 employees must have. E.g. someone does their back in while carrying laundry, or someone knocks a heavy hoover into their knee while carrying it up the stairs. The accident book is usually kept near the first aid kit. Ask your first aiders for help with this.

This should then lead to a review on how to prevent further incidents, and a review of all the relevant risk assessments.

Potentially you could then report this to the HSE. https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm

This has been asked before but it's important - Are any of you in a union?

YANBU

If it’s similar to a hotel then it’s unfair to make people try and do the same workload.

Those linens are heavy and it’s already a very manual role and so going up and down flights of stairs on top is going to be exhausting.

He needs to either fix the lift or hire temps to help.

You can get a huge load of linens in one lift but if he’s expecting you to carry smaller loads then it’s going to take at least 3x as long - and so that’s exactly what I would do.

Take 3x as long and if the work isn’t completed, then it’s not completed.

If you guys are burning yourselves out by working harder and he’s not having to fork out to repair the lift then he’s laughing.

You need to make it an issue that impacts him.

It would be an issue for me. Though, fit and healthy, I need the use of a handrail going downstairs due to a visual condition and a balance problem (that I can't ride bikes)

Worked for a lift company for years - Lifts break down and in some lifts the parts are astronomical and can take weeks or even months to arrive depending on where they need to be sourced from, unfortunately sometimes it takes a long time to get lifts back up and running.. this is for your safety and the publics safety if they are using the lift.

Your boss will have got a quote before work goes ahead or parts were ordered.. so he will know the price before the work is carried out, so him complaining about the price may not have any bearing on the wait times. (And although not coming out his pocket, there are still budgets for this work and it has to come from somewhere)

No I know of some parts that take up to 4 months. Add the German or Italian summer closures of 4 weeks and now your upto 5 months. Getting parts through customs. Getting the correct engineers booked in once parts are in country could easily be 6 months.

I can fully believe there are issues with parts. I work with a car garage and recently a land rover sat on their forecourt for 4 months because it took that long for the parts to arrive. Another colleague of mine took her car in for an MOT in October last year. It failed and needed a part replacing so it sat in their garage until Christmas.

Since Brexit getting anything in to the UK is a total PITA.

Can you get your boss to invest in a stair climber? https://www.sacktrucks.co.uk/stair-climber-trucks/

I'm not sure how they work in terms of it still being massively heavy, but you could perhaps move stuff a bit easier and less precariously?

6 months!. Oh god.

Oh god, I feel like i am going to have a complete breakdown after one month.

Maybe i need to look for a new job,

a job where there is no possible heavy lifting involved.

A little office job

@Mitara can you ask to see the order for the part? Or ask the other section manager to?

He may well be waiting for a part. We (NHS) regularly have to wait for a part to come. The lift in our elderly building (so wheelchair access and ambulance crew needing access etc) was waiting for a part for ages - we are talking months. The porters were going mad because they regularly have to deliver/take stuff from the wards etc etc.

I was just thinking , why dont they order in the replacement parts ahead of time?

There are only so many parts in a lift.

So if ordering a replacement part takes ages to come from germany or wherever, why not order the replacement parts ahead of time and have them in storage.

Then you could just hire a local lift engineer to fit the parts.

Don't be ridiculous. The OP's employer is being incredibly unreasonable. Whether or not walking would 'do OP good' is entirely irrelevant.

OP can you get four people together at the same time and take things up and down in tandem? So the first person goes up one flight of stairs and passes off to the second person who does one flight of stairs and passes off to the next person....
That way each person is only doing one flight.