2. What is Health and Safety?
Health and safety is about ensuring your staff go home at the end of their shift without having endangered their health or safety while they were at work.
Health and safety is about ensuring that anyone who could be affected by your organisation’s activities (customers, suppliers, neighbours, members of the public) is harmed in any way.
Nationally, Health and Safety is about reducing the work-related deaths, injuries and cases of ill-health suffered by the population every year.
How it used to be!
One of the most important pieces of UK legislation is the ”bold and far-reaching” Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, commonly referred to as HASAW. It is an “Enabling Act” which means it allows further laws (Regulations) to be passed. Injuries and fatalities were commonplace, even expected, and little responsibility was taken for illnesses caused by work activities. Social reformers highlighted the issue of this lack of responsibility following the huge death rate among workers constructing the Woodhead Tunnel between Manchester and Sheffield, when 32 workers lost their lives. This was in the 1830s, and it took a long time and many more deaths/injuries/illnesses before the health and safety of the UK workforce moved to the top of the Government’s agenda.
How it is now
The country has got used to the fact that deaths and injuries have fallen significantly and now often portrays H&S as something to be laughed at, that costs too much time and money. It is an easy target and the jokes are usually based on myths , some of which we have included throughout this Guide. But countless lives have been saved, serious injuries and illnesses prevented, and it is imperative that we don’t drop the ball and return to the bad old days.
How Health and Safety is facing the future
Health and Safety in this country is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and it has had a lot to keep up with in recent years: the advent of IT, huge and rapid advances in work equipment and machinery, mental health, Brexit, COVID-19, working from home, to mention a few of the issues the HSE has had to keep abreast of. It continually updates its legislation and codes of practice and reacts quickly to scientific advice.
The UK is one of the safest countries in the world and will continue to be so, but only if we all do our bit and ensure that we implement the best health and safety practices in our businesses, not just to be legally compliant, but to keep everyone safe.
Health and Safety Myth
This myth demonstrates what health and safety ISN'T - and shows how it is so often used as an excuse
A customer bought a bottle of champagne in a pub and was told by the barman that he was not allowed to open it himself “because of health and safety”.
H&S regulations do not prevent people opening bottles of champagne! To quote the HSE, “The pub chain is more likely to be concerned about the potential for spraying the décor and if so, the real reasons should have been communicated to the customer rather than using health and safety as an excuse to be party poopers”!