Leaders lay siege to flawed report
30 April 2010
IOSH leaders have launched a firm
attack
on a recent high profile report into health and safety.
The report,
‘Health and Safety: reducing the burden', produced last month
by the think tank Policy Exchange, is marred by a number of
conceptual weaknesses, according to IOSH. These include:
- Reference to ‘over compliance’, yet not recognising that
stories reported in the media aren’t about complying with any
legislative requirements, just defensive decisions based on ‘made
up rules’
- The report’s calls for proportionality, seemingly unaware
that’s exactly what’s required by health and safety legislation
right now
- Challenging whether we should be trying to eliminate all risk,
yet not realising that ‘health and safety’ certainly isn’t trying
to do this; risk is part of life and needs to be sensibly
managed
- Calling for clarity on risk assessment, while failing to
acknowledge all the work that’s been done in this area,
particularly by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) with its
sample ‘good enough’ risk assessments aimed at small
businesses
- Opposing additional duties being placed on directors, even
though no new duties are being proposed, only making explicit
what’s already implicit.
“Regrettably, this Policy Exchange report does nothing to clear
up public confusion or address the root causes of risk and
liability aversion,” said IOSH Policy & Technical Director
Richard Jones.
“It fails to tackle the need to educate society, so that
everyone recognises that risk is part of life, should be sensibly
managed and requires personal responsibility,” he added.
“It fails to highlight the need to differentiate and demystify
the plethora of non-health and safety demands on small and medium
sized businesses, such as insurance requirements, grant application
forms and employment law.
“And it also fails to identify the need to improve civil
litigation, so that everyone knows what’s reasonable and important
legal principles are appropriately tested,” he concluded.