The Events Industry Forum, the informal group which brings together 26 trade bodies including TESA, has now taken over the rewriting of the ‘Purple Guide’ from the HSE.  

While a considerable amount of work has been done to develop a new health and safety guide for events, constraints within the HSE have made it impossible to cover the breadth of guidance needed to cover all the issues affecting the events industry. As a result, the Forum – which had been working with the HSE on the guide - made a decision in December produce its own series of on-line event management guidances,

An editorial panel has been put together to develop these, using the original material put together for the HSE Guide by Working Groups.   It is hoped that the first on-line guidances will become available before the Olympics.

“After months of trying to develop a new guide, it became clear that the HSE document was going to cover little more that the Health & Safety at Work Act,” says TESA Director Jim Winship who has been involved in steering the work on the publication.   “Our industry needs a single and comprehensive event management guide, which is what we have been arguing for since the beginning .

“As a result we are now committed to making this happen ourselves.

“The new guide will comprise a number of individual guidances published through a single portal on-line which will be relatively easy to keep up to date.

“We are very aware that to date there have been issues with the consultation process that was originally set up by the HSE – something that was beyond our control. We will do our utmost to ensure that this does not happen again and that there is ample scope for people to have their say as the individual guidances are drafted. To this end we have re-opened the registration at www.eventsindustryforum.co.ukwhere people can register to be consulted on drafts.   Those registering will be notified as new drafts become available for comment.”