About Daniel

Many subscribers will be familiar with Daniel Darkens, but for those who are not, here is a bit of background.

I was born in 1966 (so at time of writing am 57 years old) and was born and raised in Kent. My professional life started with me training as an accountant, I worked in a small provincial firm of Chartered Accountants in Sittingbourne (in Kent), prior to moving to a larger firm in Holborn. From there I took a role as the Financial Controller of an electronics company in south-east London, but after a year took the plunge to work for myself. I took a range of clients for whom I provided management accounting services. One particular client also asked me to look at creating some risk assessments and method statements for work they were tendering for, and that is how my transition into health and safety started.

Early on I had to prepare some risk assessments for a team working in a tank on a nuclear power station site, where the nature of the tank meant that breathing apparatus was needed. I realised then that identfying proper controls during the risk assessment process could make the difference between life and death, so decided that I needed some formal health and safety qualifications. I gained the first of these during the late 1990’s and my Graduate qualification in early 2005.

Between the two principal qualifications, I also took on a role as finance director of an entertainments group in the West End of London which operated two venues, one of which I became the holder of the alcohol licence for. West End entertainment businesses are fickle however, so by the early 2000’s I changed career completely when I became a corporate health and safety adviser to the London Borough of Havering. I stayed there for around 11 years, during which time I specialised in the disparate areas of water hygiene and legionella, asbestos management, and stress management. I also developed the intranet-based health and safety management system for the organisation and controlled a health and safety budget of initially £1/4 million which council departments could bid for. My efforts in improving water hygiene management and the intranet-based health and safety management system saw the council gain a British Safety Council International Safety Award two years running (though it would be unfair to consider this a solo effort – many others were part of gaining these prestigious awards and it was the council that won the awards, not me).

In that role I oversaw a host of different health and safety projects, from initial quote to final completion.

It was while at Havering that I also gained the role of IOSH Managing Safely trainer, a role that I have maintained ever since, as I enjoy delivering training and particularly the IOSH Managing Safely course.

After leaving Havering, I stuck with London boroughs beginning with H, and took a role as a safety consultant with the London Borough of Haringey, specialising in management of risks arising from the use of vibrating equipment by the parks department (mowers, strimmers and the like), though my role expanded during my time there and even included carrying out a review of all fire risk assessments for council buildings in the wake of the Grenfell fire and creating safe ways of working for those that could not work remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

After finishing the role at Haringey, I realised that it would be optimistic to try and cover all the rest of the boroughs beginning with H – seeing as there were still five that I hadn’t worked directly for yet. I decided it was time to branch back out on my own and set up a consultancy, specialising in supporting health and safety within schools.

During the early part of the pandemic however, I did find myself with time that I wasn’t used to having available to me, so over the last couple of years or so, I have carved a rocking horse (for which I had to learn to carve from scratch), cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats (for the second time), cycled from London to San Sebastian in Spain, and written and self-published three books.

In around 2011, I was given (unbelievably as a Christmas present), a thoroughbred horse. For the next six years, Beau took up all my spare time – I had never had a horse before, and had to learn everything required to keep a horse and how to ride a horse. I was very fortunate in that I was able to keep him at a livery stable close to where I lived, which was handy as horses are hungry every morning and every evening, and their stables need cleaning a couple of times a day. Riding him was a pleasure, and keeping him was a pleasure, but a pleasure that was also a lot of work – initially cycling to the stables at 5.30 to feed him, muck out and turn him out into the field, then cycle home for a quick shower and bit of breakfasat before heading into work, then home from work, straight back to the stables to do more of the same and hopefully get a ride in as well, then if I was lucky a bit of food for myself by about 9pm before crashing into bed before doing the same thing the next day.

So that covers the work roles (some of them), the horse years, and some of the other outside-of-work activities. That pretty much brings you up to speed with who I am. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned that I travelled to India and the Czech Republic several times each to negotiate some international trade joint ventures between UK and local companies, or that I have travelled to Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands to view large lorries that a client with a fear of flying wanted to purchase but didn’t want to visit first hand.