Health and safety is regulated through the Health and Safety at Work Act, a short and simple piece of legislation dating from 1974, which states that employers have a duty to secure the health, safety and welfare of people at work and also to protect the public from risks arising out of work activity.
The Act also allows the government to make regulations to help achieve this. Some of these regulations are general and cover all workplaces, such as the need for a risk assessment, others are specific to a sector, such as construction or the chemical industry. The Health and Safety at Work Act, and regulations made under it, are enforced by the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities.
We looked at some of the stories from recent years and tried to track down the truth behind them. As you will have seen, we found that some are just not true, and many others are misrepresentations of the truth.
This doesn't mean that every health and safety story we read about is made up. In some cases regulations have been wrongly interpreted. However that is different from saying that health and safety regulations, or their enforcement have been wrong. In none of the stories we looked at did we find that was the case. In other examples employers have used health and safety as an excuse for not doing something which they did not want to do anyway, or as an excuse for saving money. There were also cases where the standard requirements of an insurance policy are unsuitable for an event, and rather than have dialogue between the organiser and insurer, the organiser has gone straight to the local press.
The long term effect of these myths being circulated is that the “brand” of health and safety gets diminished. People see “health and safety” as stupid rules and barriers, rather than as a framework for protecting those most vulnerable in society. People begin to identify the Health and Safety Executive with draconian regulations, despite the fact that none of the stories we looked at involved any action by them, and they remain one of the bodies most respected by those who deal with them. In fact 89% of all employers who have had contact with the HSE have seen it as a “helpful” organisation.
Since the passing of the Health and Work Act we have seen disasters such as Piper Alpha, the Herald of Free Enterprise and Morecambe Bay. Occupational Cancers still kill between 10 and 20,000 people every year and around 2 million people suffer from ill-health at work. We need to ensure that health risks are identified and dealt with so that people at work and the wider public are protected. That is what health and safety is really about.
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