WE all love a health and safety gone mad story – it’s what makes the world go round – as long as it does so in a safe and slowly-turning manner with a clearly defined sign explaining just what’s happening.

Health and safety seems to dominate our lives in the UK – but I can’t remember it happening when I was growing up in the 1970s.

Last year we had a few days in Venice and literally sat next to a huge canal. The chairs and tables were within inches of the edge. There were no warning signs there – after all, surely anyone can see the canal and the obvious danger. If you drunk a bit too much, leaned back, toppled over and fell in – well it’d be your own fault. You deserved it. Here there would be a barrier and signs, somewhat spoiling the carefree Italian ambience.

But it turns out that more and more organisations ranging from local councils to pubs and shops hide behind the term health and safety – not the legislation just the term – for other reasons they’d rather not state. A convenient excuse.

Even more bizarre, it’s now so bad that the Health and Safety Executive has set up its own Myth Busters Challenge Panel so if anyone thinks they are being hoodwinked behind a health and safety veil the panel will investigate and say if it’s a load of rubbish or there is actually something in it.

And often it turns out to be an easy excuse.

All these are genuine cases that have been dealt with by the panel.

First up the office that banned the use of a kettle claiming staff would then walk about with cups causing a healthy and safety hazard.

The panel was pulling no punches by stating: "It’s clear the employer does not want to provide facilities for making and consuming tea and coffee in the office and is using health and safety as an excuse. There is absolutely no reason to ban kettles or people walking around with hot drinks. The employer needs to own up to why they do not want to provide the facilities and stop hiding behind poor excuses."

That’s a wrap on the knuckles in a way that clearly would not cause discomfort or a mark.

A pub tried to go one better by refusing to let a customer carry a tray with their drinks on it because they had not been ‘health and safety trained’.

The panel ruled: "The suggestion that special training is needed for a customer to use a tray to carry drinks/food in a restaurant is patently ridiculous. There is no occupational health and safety legislation which requires customers to be trained to do something which they are likely to do regularly in their own homes."

After all, it certainly wouldn’t be in the customer’s best interests to spill his newly-purchased drinks. And he’d not be that popular with his thirsty mates either.

How many Examiner readers take their children to swimming lessons only to be told they must wear hats for ‘health and safety reasons’? When some parents questioned this the swimming teacher was not sure but thought it was something to do with hair clogging the filters.

But the panel stated: "There is no health and safety regulation which requires people to wear hats in swimming pools. This is clear from the inconsistency that they are not required during public swimming sessions. Pool management may require pool users to wear hats during swimming lessons for other reasons – possibly to ease identification – but these should be made clear rather than simply offering health and safety as a possible excuse."

So there you have it. If you think you’re having the health and safety wool pulled over your eyes so you’re in great danger of not being able to see the truth, you now know who to call.

Myth Busters.

Find them at: www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index