Health and Safety at Work

An Essential Guide for Managers

Jeremy Stranks

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780749478186
• Edition: 10
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Verwaltung

This practical guide for employers in the UK continues to provide managers with the essential advice on how to establish health and safety procedures in organizations. Written in jargon-free language, Health and Safety at Work cuts through the legal complexities to enable you to fully understand the law and its implications for your business. Filled with expert knowledge and written in an accessible style, this book equips you with the legal and practical knowledge you need to protect your employees and your business. This 10th Edition of the indispensable guide, Health and Safety at Work, has been updated to comply with all recent changes and additions to Health and Safety law including The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and increased legislation and prioritisation of issues of stress at work. This new edition also comes with downloadable online resources and templates that you can use in your business.

Part 1

Health and Safety Management and Administration

1

Principal Legal Requirements

The law on health and safety at work has, like much protective legislation, developed in a fragmented way over the last two centuries. In many cases, its growth has been brought about as a result of public outcry at, for instance, the appalling conditions under which children worked in the Lancashire textile mills following the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the first statute, the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802, was passed to combat this state of affairs in the textile industry. This Act limited the working hours of apprentices and established minimum standards of environmental control in terms of heating, ventilation and humidity control. Enforcement was by means of visitors to factories appointed by local magistrates.

The Factory Act 1833 resulted in the appointment of four factory inspectors with specific powers of entry to factories and means of enforcement. However, it was not until 1864 that such powers were extended beyond the textile industry to the matchmaking and pottery industries and, subsequently, with the Factory and Workshop Act 1878, to other forms of manufacturing industry. A final consolidating Act, the Factory and Workshop Act 1901, formed the basis for much of the current protective health and safety legislation. It enabled the Minister or Secretary of State to make specific regulations covering a wide range of relatively dangerous industrial processes and practices.

Modern health and safety legislation commenced with the Factories Act 1937, the predecessor of the Factories Act 1961. Similar legislation came into operation about this time dealing with mines and quarries, offices, shops and railway premises, and agriculture.

The Report of the Committee on Safety and Health at Work (Cmnd 5034) was published in July 1972 (The Robens Report). This Report proposed substantial changes in the law and administration of occupational health and safety and was instrumental in the passing of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, described in the following pages.

Since 1993 European Directives have had a significant effect on UK health and safety legislation.

CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LIABILITY

Breaches of health and safety law can incur both criminal and civil liability.

1. Criminal liability

A crime is an offence against the state. Criminal liability refers to the duties and responsibilities under statute, principally the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, and regulations, and the penalties that can be imposed by the criminal courts, mainly fines and imprisonment.

Criminal law is based on a system of enforcement. Its statutory provisions are enforced by the state’s enforcement agencies, such as the police, Health and Safety Executive, local authorities and fire and rescue authorities.

2. Civil liability

A civil action generally involves negligence and/or breach of a statutory duty. In such actions a claimant sues a defendant for a remedy (or remedies) that is beneficial to the claimant. In most cases this takes the form of damages, a form of financial compensation. In a substantial number of cases the claimant will agree to settle out of court.

Civil liability, therefore, refers to the ‘penalty’ that can be imposed by a civil court, eg the County Court, High Court, Court of Appeal (Civil Division) or House of Lords, and consists of awards of damages for injury, disease and/or death at work.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK ACT (HASAWA) 1974

1. Duties of employers

It is the duty of every employer, so far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees (HASAWA Section 2(1)). In particular, this includes:

• the provision and maintenance of plant and systems of work that are safe and without risks to health (HASAWA Section 2(2) (a));
• arrangements for ensuring the safety and absence of health risks in connection with the use, handling, storage and transport of articles and substances (HASAWA Section 2(2) (b));
• the provision of such information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary to ensure the health and safety at work of employees (HASAWA Section 2(2) (c));
• the maintenance of any place of work under the employer’s control in a condition that is safe and without risks to health, and the provision and maintenance of means of access and egress from it that are safe and without risks to health (HASAWA Section 2(2) (d)); and
• the provision and maintenance of a working environment for his employees that is safe, without risks to health and adequate as regards facilities and arrangements for their welfare at work (HASAWA Section 2(2) (e)).

2. Duties of employees

It is the duty of every employee while at work:

• to take reasonable care for the health and safety of himself and of other persons who may be affected by his acts or omissions at work; and
• as regards any duty or requirement imposed on his employer or any other person by or under any of the relevant statutory provisions, to co-operate with him so far as is necessary to enable that duty or requirement to be performed or complied with (HASAWA Section 7).

No person shall intentionally or recklessly interfere with or misuse anything provided in the interests of health, safety or welfare in pursuance of any of the relevant statutory provisions (HASAWA Section 8).

3. Duties of employers to persons other than their employees

Every employer must conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment, eg contractors, are not exposed to risks to health or safety (HASAWA Section 3(1)).

4. Duties of occupiers of premises to persons other than their employees

Section 4 of the HASAWA has effect for imposing on persons duties in relation to those who:

• are not their employees, but
• use non-domestic premises made available to them as a place of work or as a place where they may use plant or substances provided for their use there,

and applies to premises so made available and other non-domestic premises used in connection with them.

In this case the person or persons in control of the premises must take such measures to ensure, so far as is reasonably pr...