Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
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I think alot of new-start-ups dont realise that alot of the work they do is illigal and that they require licenses to carry out much of their work - until they get caught and fined, or someone (on here) points out their errors and they go and get the required licensing.
I for one would not have known about alot of the regulations without LJN (Waste carriers) and friends in the Farming community (PA1/6 chainsaw tickets, Pesticide tickets etc).
Without better regulation of our industry to stop people trading without the correct licenses it will continue to be a problem for us, and continue to undermine those of us who operate a legitimate business with all the costs that entails.
We need to help "educate", not "chastise" people new into our industry. This is especially true when the recipient is open and willing to accept guidance or actively comes looking...
Perhaps, the solution is within our (LJN's) hands as clearly no one else (other Assocations) appears to be proactive in this arena?
The origanal goal of this website was to take a user through a series of Q's and generate a list of topics to that were either mandatory or should be subject of further research by the business
This is a good starting point http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/netregs/ (its the new location for the NetRegs website)
http://www.npctraining.co.uk/hedge_trimmers_training.htm
http://www.hushfarms.co.uk/training/ride-on-mowers
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg291.pdf
These links might surprise some people, especially the " ive been doing it for years, dont need a bit of paper to tell me how".
BTW, Im not being arguementative with this post, but this comes up fairly often, in fact as recent as yesterday.
agreed brian, i did the 'Manual handling and awareness' course last winter (a free course), but was surprised how learning can help save energy, time and accidents and therefore money : i know there are many courses i could still do with doing , but we all have to start somewhere ; i believe there is strimming, mowing and mini-digging (sometimes required for insurance) .
http://www.lantra.co.uk/
This contains just about all the information you would need for training courses for our industry
There are bare minimums as far as training and certification is concerned - e.g. pa1/pa6. As self-employed or employers unfortunately there is always going to be another and another document/certificate that we need though - some, like the waste carriers license, that we just need to pay for, others that require training (chainsaw, pesticide application...) - and we should all have a folder or file marked 'Training' for this purpose. This file should contain all the qualifications and training achieved to date PLUS those that we are scheduling in over a period of time - because lets face it none of us have a certificate for absolutely everything that 2012's legislation necessitates.
As Brian says above there are many that take the view that "I've been doing it for years", myself included to an extent; this however does not excuse you or I. In this day and age all the powered equipment related accidents and incidents that people are involved in are highlighted to us through social media and the like so we do not have the excuse that it has never happened to me so why should I bother. The fact that accidents have happened to others is proof enough that it can happen to you too. I know that I personally have the experience and the savvy to use most pieces of machinery or equipment that may be presented before me in a safe and efficient manner, but I have also been told in the past of a couple of bad habits that I have. This is what training eliminates - to ensure that you are using the equipment as safe as possible, not what you consider to be safe.
Then, there is the responsibility for those that use your equipment - can you be sure that all of it is flawless and in best working order, that the user of it knows exactly what he is doing, that an accident is not waiting to happen? Employing people is a serious responsibility when it comes to use of powered equipment and WE as the employer must ensure we are operating a tight ship when it comes to Health and Safety at Work regs. Compliance is not an option. The web pages that Brian attached above are a start for all on here.
I am booked into 5 day chainsaw course at the end of this month and have 2 other necessary courses that I need to do very soon also. For this year that will be all. We need to be realistic about training too - it all costs a lot of money!!