HASAW 35 Years Old

[Stewart Newlands]

"The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 (“HSWA”) became law on 31 July 1974 and so celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.

 

The HSWA was created largely as result of the work of the parliamentary Committee on Safety and Health at Work, led by Lord Robens, and the report that bore his name was published in June 1972. One method of assessing the relative success of the HSWA is to consider whether the problems identified by the Robens Report have been addressed by the HSWA over the course of the last 35 years.

 

Too much, too complicated

Prior to the HSWA there were approximately 30 separate Acts and more than 500 sets of regulations dealing with health and safety in the workplace. These different regimes operated across different industries and workplaces and, at times, overlapped. The situation was confusing and unfair, in that it afforded some employees greater protection than others.

 

A safety culture shift

The Robens Report suggested that the law in 1972 was too prescriptive and that in order for health and safety legislation to be more flexible and effective it should focus on goal setting. In this sense, the Robens report was advocating a broader “self-regulating” approach rather than a rigid reliance on specific prescriptive legislation.

However, this approach of self-regulation has drawn some criticism from business.

 

It is noteworthy that it has taken the last 35 years and the passing of a further legal instrument (the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008) for a real deterrent – prison – to be made available to courts when individuals have caused non-fatal harm to another as a result of breaches of the HSWA.

 

At first glance, the annual fatality statistics appear to provide conclusive proof that the HSWA has been a resounding success in reducing workplace deaths. The number of employees killed at work fell from 651 in 1974 to 180 for 2008/2009 (provisional figure). However, it is important to put this statistic into context."

 

Quotes from http://www.shponline.co.uk/article.asp?pag...article_id=9106

 

What does the Blue Room think, 35 year into HAWSA and with the purple book 2 on the way is the balance correct?

[Simon Lewis]

What does the Blue Room think, 35 year into HAWSA and with the purple book 2 on the way is the balance correct?

 

I think that Paul Verrico's article is very pertinent, and makes some good observations. The umbrella framework of HSAW works fine, but as Verrico infers, the plethora of regulations and ACOPs now tend to confuse the issue of safety. What should be a 'clear goal setting approach' has often (sadly) turned into a dictatorial quoting of confusing rules and regulations at every turn.

 

The health and safety industry is chasing smaller and smaller gains, whilst accruing more 'power'. In the meantime, there has been a shift from "dangerous" manufacturing industries to lower risk activities.

 

It is probably fair to say that HSAW is fine, but our approach to the regulations made under it needs reviewing.

 

Simon

[Simon Lewis]

Oh, BTW aren't we coming up the third edition of the purple book?

[stagemanagement]

For every life the HASAW act has saved; it's created about 15 jobs for paranoid hypochondriacs with clipboards and little or no understanding of the activities they are assessing!!

 

The Act is a wonderful thing - the creation of the H&S officer with absolutely no industry experience of anything except H&S has been terrible.

[paulears]

I believe the entire thing to have been flawed from the start. The precept was no doubt sound, but it has been the cause of so much disinformation over the years that all the good work in safety that has evolved is overshadowed by complex, misunderstood and misinterpreted rules and regulations that have had a detrimental impact on almost every industry.

 

How many people have even read, let alone own the purple book?

[Simon Lewis]

For every life the HASAW act has saved; it's created about 15 jobs for paranoid hypochondriacs with clipboards and little or no understanding of the activities they are assessing!!

 

Possibly true, and something that the article addresses. However, I'm old enough to have worked for a short time under pre HSAW legislation, the ethos of which carried on for some years. The prescriptive 'dos and don'ts' were better at protecting equipment and the interests of management than protecting the worker. We may cringe at today's safety culture, but in most respects it is an improvement over the situation in 1974...

[stagemanagement]

For every life the HASAW act has saved; it's created about 15 jobs for paranoid hypochondriacs with clipboards and little or no understanding of the activities they are assessing!!

 

Possibly true, and something that the article addresses. However, I'm old enough to have worked for a short time under pre HSAW legislation, the ethos of which carried on for some years. The prescriptive 'dos and don'ts' were better at protecting equipment and the interests of management than protecting the worker. We may cringe at today's safety culture, but in most respects it is an improvement over the situation in 1974...

 

 

Undoubtedly the situation today is vastly improved upon that of pre-1974. It's improved upon 1994!!

 

However, how many medium/large scale employers use the Act to improve safety and conditions for workers and how many of them use it to introduce more and more barriers to process of carrying out the job in an attempt to stave of litigation?

 

The new Firelaw Acts (both Eng/Wales & Scotland) are a perfect example of this - previously there was a list of do's and don't and everyone understoddd where the lines in the sand were.

Now we have a general situation where RA's are being manipulated to make Fire safety cost effective and convenient, largely because there is little follow up from Fire Officers to assess the competency of those performing the assessments.

 

In particular, thetre-land now has a number of safety assessments being carried out by staff who are also charged with reducing operating costs - conflict of interest perhaps?...........