fitz

I posted something similar not so long back - as with the advice above, plenty of patience and stick with it. What worked for me was surprisingly enough being consistent and staying patient. Every time our dog pulled, I would turn around, walk back a dozen steps or so and sit her down until I was ready to start walking again. The first 3 or 4 days were slow going but after that she got the hang of it as did I, and 5 or so weeks later she's a changed dog. Not perfect, but light years ahead of where we were.

Yes, £25 for the year. After the initial indignation I quickly calmed down realising £25 was still good if it saved me going to the tip every month or so with garden waste.

This year we had to pay on top of everything else a separate payment of around £25 for the bin men to continue to collect our brown garden waste bin... Apart from that our guys are generally pretty good.

I'll have a go, been years since I last had a go.

At home we used cheap white undercoat before using the F&B colours. It was the Mrs choice, if I'd have had my way I'd have chosen something else, £750 in paint to do the house made my eyes water

Thanks for all the input, appreciate the tip regarding whacking as you go along, and the demolition sites for material. I hadn't thought about that. I'm probably going to have to do this in October now as I'm getting married in a few weeks and the next run of weekends are a bit full up.

I'm not sure. It might be worth checking. There could be an assumption that as the items are stored in a work place they are still a risk and need assessing. Do you have signs up near all the machinery to state who is trained to use them?

I'm not sure if they do. We had a bandsaw at our old work place, and only a family member was allowed to use it. One of the staff knowing they were not allowed to use it, proceeded to do so and lost the end of a finger. He got a few grand in compensation from the insurance company even though he wasn't allowed to use said machine.

The fee is probably there as a deterrent for business owners, ensuring H&S is not slack on their premises, and to ensure the changes happen fast. The £77 email would stick in everyones throat I bet, but without wanting to be rude - if your machines were in a fit state of repair, there would have been no costs to yourself at all. Chase the problem back to the beginning.

Unfortunately as mentioned above, HSE has replaced common sense. I run a factory with 50 staff. We pay for external H&S support to ensure we're doing the best we can by my employees. I work on the basis that I have to sleep soundly at night and use the external company to help us find solutions to some challenging H&S requirements. Safety of the staff is paramount, but there is still a job to be done. When I had the family business, we didn't have the financial ability to pay for external support, and had to use common sense to ensure everything was as good as it could be. HSE doesn't discriminate, if you are a small business with 5 employees they will visit and measure you in the same manner as a company who has millions of pounds in turn over. A lot of smaller businesses could use the help of the HSE but not the cost of the visit and documentation.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/internalops/og/ogprocedures/inspection/inspection-procedure.pdf And here; http://www.hse.gov.uk/fee-for-intervention/what-is-ffi.htm So in short, yes it look like they can charge you for their inspection if they find issues

Thanks for the input - ok looks like I'll be getting my hands dirtier this weekend then and removing the carpet and liner.

Hi all After some advice from the more knowledgeable amongst us. I have an old pond in the garden which is surplus to requirements. I've drained it by cutting the plastic liner and have since folded the liner up and the carpet into the bottom and used some of the larger stones (roughly 10" x 8" x 8") into the bottom to hold this flat. That leaves me with a pond, roughly 3m long x 2m wide at the widest part, by 70cm deep at the deepest part left to deal with. I'd be looking after the pond is filled in correctly to lay patio slabs and use the area for seating / pergola etc. The pond is only part of the area - in case you were thinking that we were hobbits. My very rough plan of action as I see it: Fill in remainder of cavity with soil and rubble. Lay 5cm of mill waste on top and compact flat. Lay membrane to stop weeds. Layer of sharp sand and cement mix to settle the stones on, bobs your uncle etc. Does that sound about right? I'm most concerned about not filling the hole properly and ending up with a sunken patio! Cheers Fitz

depending on what phone you have you can download apps for free. There is also a website called, walk jog run (or very similar). You can use this to map your walk and see the distance you're travelling.

We give ours dry food, but every now and then we give them some tinned food mixed in as a treat if they've had a few really long walks. You could try the reverse. More tinned food with a few bits of kibble in to start with and gradually change the ratio. Cracking looking pup