Don't touch that office chair! Health and Safety demand 48 hours notice to move it

But not at the Health and Safety Executive.

There, employees have been banned from shifting furniture on the remote chance that they might do themselves a mischief.

They are told to book a porter to complete the task - and allow two days for it to happen.

The new rule could prove particularly problematic for staff planning a last-minute meeting.

If a porter cannot be summoned urgently staff would be left with the awkward choice of disobeying a direct order from the management or asking some of their guests to stand.

To hammer home the point, signs which read: Do not lift tables or chairs without giving 48 hours notice to HSE management', have been plastered across the walls in several meeting rooms.

The ruling was discovered by Labour peer Lord Berkeley. He noticed the signs when he attended a meeting at the London headquarters of the HSE, whose responsibilities include workers at nuclear plants, oil rigs and huge factories.

Incensed by what he considered to be "health and safety gone mad", Lord Berkeley raised the matter in the House of Lords, demanding in a parliamentary question to know why the HSE had put up the notices.

"I saw them and thought, 'It just can't be true'," he said.

"It's ridiculous to mollycoddle people like that. It's taking health-and-safety precautions to a ridiculous level.

They ought to be concentrating on the important things.

"The HSE is an office like any other – so if it is not required in other offices, why there? It's the epitome of a nanny state."

Lord Berkeley also criticised the HSE for sending home staff from a meeting he was attending after it had snowed.

"We were told we had to go home because there was an inch of snow on the ground outside," he said.

"The buses and trains were still running. It's just preposterous."

In a written answer to Lord Berkeley, Lord McKenzie, a work and pensions minister, said: "Where furniture needs to be moved regularly, it is mounted on lockable wheels so that any staff can move it easily.

"For other cumbersome furniture, arrangements have been made with porters to move it safely.

"Signs have therefore been posted in some meeting rooms advising of this arrangement."

The signs have been put up in almost all of the 31 HSE offices across the country, where 3,600 staff are employed.

A spokesman said: "HSE's approach to moving furniture in its offices is based on its own assessment of the risks from manual handling - one of the main causes of work-related absence among its staff."

An insider at the executive described life there as "a nanny state gone absolutely bonkers".

"Why we can't move a chair or lift a table out of the way when we want beggars belief," he said.

"Are we seriously supposed to wait two days before we can rearrange a room so we can all see each other in a meeting?"

Unsurprisingly, the HSE has one of the best records for accidents in the country, with 107 injuries per 100,000 workers over the last year compared with 150 per 100,000 in education, 360 in agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, 640 in construction and 1,390 in transport, storage and communications.

The furniture-moving ban follows a long line of edicts made under the banner of health and safety.

Last week, it emerged that a school banned knotted ties because it said they were a safety risk. Pupils at Bramhall High in Stockport were told to wear clipons instead or be sent home.

During the festive period staff at Tower Hamlets Council in East London were banned from putting up Christmas lights and decorations in their offices in case they hurt themselves.