The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 – Fortieth Birthday!
The Health and Safety at Work Act, often referred to as either the HSW Act, or HASAWA for short, is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health, safety and welfare in Great Britain. The Health and Safety Executive, with local authorities (and other enforcing authorities) is responsible for enforcing the Act and a number of other Acts and Statutory Instruments, including European Health & Safety Directives relevant to the working environment. The Act reflected the recommendations of the 1972 Robens Report, introducing a broad goal setting, non-prescriptive model, based on the view that those that create risk are best placed to manage it. Rather than the previous existing detailed and industry specific industry regulations, it created a flexible system whereby regulations expressed goals and principles, supported by codes of practice and guidance, which applied to all people at work or affected by work activities, including members of the public. Based on consultation and engagement, the new regime was designed to deliver a proportionate, targeted and risk-based approach.
HASAWA also established two new bodies – HSC and HSE – to implement the framework – later merged into one organisation. The HSE oversees and enforces workplace health and safety legislation, as well as offering advice especially in the form of publications, many of which can be downloaded free from their detailed constantly updated website. Although more recently, and quite controversially, the HSE will now charge for some work under the heading FFI, Fees For Intervention. Besides laying down duties, HASAWA gave the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Local Authority Inspectors wide ranging powers – to prosecute and to issue prohibition notices, halting dangerous work or improvement notices. Nowadays the offending employers will also find their details published on the HSE website, as part of a name and shame approach.
HASAWA imposed a range of general duties on employers, the self employed and employees, as well as others such as designers, manufacturers or suppliers of articles and substances for use at work. Section 2(1) It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all their employees is one such general duty still regularly quoted today.
While most modern health and safety law applies ‘across-the-board’, it is worth remembering that there are also additional regulations covering particular industry sectors, such as construction, agriculture, railways, mines and quarries and major hazard and nuclear installations that reflect the particular risk and hazard profile of those sectors. Agriculture continues to be regarded as one of the riskiest industries to work for regarding the number of deaths and serious injuries that still happen in proportion to the number of people that work within the sector.
More than 650 employees lost their lives each year when the HASAWA was launched in 1974. This figure has since plummeted by 85%, to an all-time low of 133 seen now, new Health and Safety Executive (HSE) statistics have recently revealed. The injury figures tell a similar story, falling by 77% from 336,701 in 1974 to 78,222 today. The figures bear testimony to the Act’s tremendous impact on employers.
The current HSE Chair, Judith Hackett says their aim is not to straitjacket employers, but to set standards by outlining how safety improvements can be reached that are ‘universally applicable’, whether workers are in a lab, farm or while shale gas fracking.
Mark Harper, the new Minister of State for Health and Safety, marked the 40th anniversary of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 by commenting that Britain has come an incredibly long way over the past 40 years in protecting its workforce. Our workplace safety record is now the envy of the world, with businesses and governments queuing up to tap into our expertise. Any death at work is a death too many. But few can dispute that the reduction in fatalities and injuries over the past 40 years is a significant step forward. Britain is now officially one of the safest places in Europe and the world to work.
He added, So, while we all rightly curse false health and safety excuses, its worth thinking how fortunate we are today that we can go out to do a hard days work safe in the knowledge that our safety is being taken seriously.
Having worked in both HR and health and safety for the last thirty years, I believe it is true to say that HASAWA has lost none of its legal bite over that time. However, with the HSE being made to introduce financial savings by charging for some of their work, and with ever increasing business regulation placed on SMEs by whichever government of the day is in power, it would be my observation that unfortunately health and safety priorities regularly lose out to other business pressures, until that is, of course, someone gets injured. Sadly, for many employers safety is still not regarded as the work necessary to achieve prevention from harm but is only reactive to what action should we now do after someone has already got hurt. It is only those organisations that make sure that they have a far more preventative approach to safety, clearly generated down from the top of the management tree, that will not need to fear about an unannounced visit from the HSE, or, receive that dreadful phone call telling them someone at work has been seriously injured or worst still, killed. As far as that is concerned, HASAWA currently still has 133 reasons to keep on working.
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