Chapter 1

Health and safety foundations

Introduction
 Occupational health and safety is relevant to all
branches of industry, business and commerce
including traditional industries, information
technology companies, the National Health Service,
care homes, schools, universities, leisure facilities
and offices.
 It is particularly important for the construction
industry
 Occupational health and safety affects all aspects of
work.
 In a low hazard organization, health and safety may be
supervised by a single competent manager.
 In a high hazard manufacturing plant, many different
specialists, such as engineers (electrical, mechanical
and civil), lawyers, medical doctors and nurses,
trainers, work planners and supervisors, may be
required to assist the professional health and safety
practitioner in ensuring that there are satisfactory
health and safety standards within the organization.
 There are many obstacles to the achievement of
good standards.
 However, there are some powerful incentives for
organizations to strive for high health and safety
standards.
 These incentives are moral, legal and economic.
• Corporate responsibility, a term used extensively in
the 21st century world of work, covers a wide range
of issues.
• It includes the effects that an organization's
business has on the environment, human rights and
third world poverty.
• Health and safety in the workplace is an important
corporate responsibility issue.
 corporate responsibility, they are working to
encourage organizations to:
• improve management systems to reduce injuries and ill
health
• demonstrate the importance of health and safety issues
at board level
• report publicly on health and safety issues within their
organization, including their performance against
targets.
• Health and Safety Executive believe that effective
management of health and safety.
• is vital to employee well-being
• has a role to play in enhancing the reputation of
businesses and helping them achieve high-performance
teams
• is financially beneficial to business.
Some basic definitions
• Health – the protection of the bodies and minds of
people from illness resulting from the materials,
processes or procedures used in the workplace.
• Safety – the protection of people from physical
injury. The borderline between health and safety is
ill-defined and the two words are normally used
together to indicate concern for the physical and
mental well-being of the individual at the place of
work
• Welfare – the provision of facilities to maintain the
health and well-being of individuals at the
workplace.
 Welfare facilities include washing and sanitation
arrangements, the provision of drinking water, heating,
lighting, accommodation for clothing, seating (when
required by the work activity), eating and rest rooms.
 First aid arrangements are also considered as welfare
facilities.
• Occupational or work-related ill-health – is
concerned with those illnesses or physical and
mental disorders that are either caused or triggered
by workplace activities.
 Such conditions may be induced by the particular work
activity of the individual or by activities of others in the
workplace.
 The time interval between exposure and the onset of
the illness may be short (e.g. asthma attacks) or long
(e.g. deafness or cancer).
• Environmental protection – arrangements to cover
those activities in the workplace which affect the
environment (in the form of flora, fauna, water, air
and soil) and, possibly, the health and safety of
employees and others. Such activities include waste
and effluent disposal and atmospheric pollution.
• Accident – defined by the Health and Safety
Executive as ‘any unplanned event that results in
injury or ill health of people, or damage or loss to
property, plant, materials or the environment or a
loss of a business opportunity’.
 Other authorities define an accident more narrowly by
excluding events that do not involve injury or ill-health.
This book will always use the Health and Safety
Executive definition
• Near miss – is any incident that could have resulted
in an accident.
• Knowledge of near misses is very important since
research has shown that, approximately, for every ten
‘near miss’ events at a particular location in the
workplace, a minor accident will occur.
• Dangerous occurrence – is a ‘near miss’ which
could have led to serious injury or loss of life.
• Dangerous occurrences are defined in the Reporting of
Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences
Regulations 1995 (often known as RIDDOR) and are
always reportable to the Enforcement Authorities.
Examples include the collapse of a scaffold or the failure
of any passenger carrying equipment.
• Hazard and risk – a hazard is the potential of a
substance, activity or process to cause harm.
• Hazards take many forms including, for example,
chemicals, electricity and working from a ladder.
• A hazard can be ranked relative to other hazards or to a
possible level of danger.
• A risk is the likelihood of a substance, activity or process
to cause harm.
• A risk can be reduced and the hazard controlled by
good management.
The legal framework for health
and safety
• There are two sub-divisions of the law that apply to
health and safety issues: criminal law and civil law.
• Criminal low consists of rules of behavior laid down
by the government or the state and, normally,
enacted by Parliament through Acts of Parliament.
These rules or Acts are imposed on the people for the
protection of the people.
• Civil law concerns disputes between individuals or
individuals and companies. An individual sues another
individual or company to address a civil wrong.
The Health and Safety at Work
Act 1974
• Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 was based.
The principal recommendations were as follows:
• There should be a single Act that covers all workers
and that Act should contain general duties which
should ‘influence attitudes’
• the Act should cover all those affected by the
employer’s undertaking such as contractors,
visitors, students and members of the public
• there should be an emphasis on health and safety
management and the development of safe systems
of work. This would involve the encouragement of
employee participation in accident prevention.
(This was developed many years later into the
concept of the health and safety culture)
• enforcement should be targeted at ‘self-regulation’
by the employer rather than reliance on
prosecution in the courts.
General duties and key sections
of the Act
• safe plant and systems of work
• safe use, handling, transport and storage of substances and
articles
• provision of information, instruction, training and
supervision
• safe place of work, access and egress
• safe working environment with adequate welfare facilities
• a written safety policy together with organizational and
other arrangements (if there are more than four employees)
• consultation with safety representatives and formation of
safety committees where there are recognized trade unions.
The Management of Health and
Safety at Work Regulations
1999
• Employers’ duties
• undertake suitable and sufficient written risk
assessments when there are more than four employees
• put in place effective arrangements for the planning,
organization, control, monitoring and review of health
and safety measures in the workplace (including health
surveillance).
• employ (to be preferred) or contract competent persons
to help them comply with health and safety duties
• develop suitable emergency procedures. Ensure
that employees and others are aware of these
procedures and can apply them
• provide employees and others with health and
safety information, in particular information
resulting from risk assessment or emergency
procedures
• cooperate in health and safety matters with other
employers who share the same workplace
 provide non-employees working on the work site
with relevant health and safety information
 provide employees with adequate and relevant
health and safety training
 provide temporary workers with appropriate health
and safety information
• Employees’ duties
• use any equipment or substance in accordance with
any training or instruction given by the employer
• report to the employer any serious or imminent
danger
• report any shortcomings in the employer’s
protective health and safety arrangements.
Role and function of external
agencies
• The Health and Safety Commission, Health and
Safety Executive and the Local Authorities (a term
used to cover County, District and Unitary Councils)
are all external agencies that have a direct role in
the monitoring and enforcement of health and
safety standards.
• There are, however, three other external agencies
that have a regulatory influence on health and
safety standards in the workplace.
• Fire and Rescue Authority
• The Fire and Rescue Authority is situated within a single
or a group of local authorities and is normally associated
with rescue, fire fighting and giving general advice.
• The Authority issues Alterations Notices for workplaces
and conducts routine and random fire inspections.
• . The Authority can prosecute for offences against fire
safety law.
• The Environment Agency
• ensuring effective controls of the most polluting
industries
• monitoring radioactive releases from nuclear sites
• ensuring that discharges to controlled waters are at
acceptable levels
• setting standards and issuing permits for the collection,
transporting, processing and disposal of waste (including
radioactive waste
• Insurance companies
• Insurance companies play an important role in the
improvement of health and safety standards.
• Since 1969, it has been a legal requirement for
employers to insure against liability for injury or disease
to their employees arising out of their employment.
• This is called employers’ liability insurance.
The health and safety problem
in the construction industry
• to reduce the incidence rate of fatalities and major
injuries by 40% by 2004/05 and by 66% by 2009/10
• to reduce the incidence rate of cases of work-
related ill health by 20% by 2004/05 and by 50% by
2009/10
• to reduce the number of working days lost per 100
000 workers from work-related injury and ill health
by 20% by 2004/05 and by 50% by 2009/10.
The framework for health and
safety management

Key elements of successful health and safety

management
 Key Elements 1

Policy
 Effective health and safety policies set
a clear direction for the organisation to
follow.
 Key Elements 2

Policy

Organising Organising

 An effective management structure and Audit

Planning &
Implementing
arrangements are in place for delivering
the policy.
Measuring
Performance

Reviewing
Performance
 Key Elements 3

Planning
 There is a planned and systematic
approach to implementing the health
and safety policy through an effective
health and safety management system.
Key Elements 4

Measuring Performance
 Performance is measured against
agreed standards to reveal when and
where improvement is needed.
 Key Elements 5/6
Reviewing of
Performance and
Auditing
 The organisation learns from all
relevant experience and applies the
lessons.

 Auditing is a process whereby an

organisation can review and
continuously evaluate the effectiveness
of their OH&S management system