Health and Safety at Work Act 1974: a guide for employers
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1. Background to the legislation
SOME FIVE MILLION people not previously covered by health and safety legislation were brought within the scope of new law for the first time last month. The elimination of industrial injuries, and injuries and damage to third parties, is important on economic as well as social grounds. No less important is the improvement in the general health of employees, for absenteeism costs the country far more in lost man hours than strikes do.
Cost of accidents
What do accidents at work cost the road transport industry? Reported accidents—and many industrial accidents are not reported—involving at least three days absence from work increased in road transport from 16,200 to 33,800 between 1961 and 1970. Accidents in docks and warehouses. dyer the same period increased less dramatically—from 7,506 to 8,865. It might be thought that civil aviation was at least as dangerous an occupation as road transport, but over the same period reported accidents reduced from 30 to 15.
Assuming that earlier trends continue in road transport in 1975, 30,000 accidents involving, say, 3i days absence gives an industry figure of 100,000 lost man-days, probably a considerable under-estimate. We do not know the proportion of drivers, fitters and depot staff included in the 30,000 accidents, but whatever the make-up great loss of vehicle earnings must result from the lost days. If only a quarter of the injured men drove 32-tonners and revenue of £60 a day is assumed lost, road transport suffers a loss of 25,000 man days x £60 or Eli millions a year. Can we afford this? Can it be prevented?
An industry like road transport consisting of a multitude of firms of all sizes from the family-unit to the State-owned giant freight and passenger carriers will be greatly affected by the Health and Safety at Work Act. Whatever the size of the employing unit the drivers of buses and lorries are free agents for most of the time they are at work. There is a minimum of supervision because of the nature of the industry.
Drivers' responsibilities
Drivers should need no reminding of the importance of road safety which is, in any case, subject to other legislative and managerial constraintsslap-happy and accident-prone drivers are seldom employed for long. But the mobility of transport drivers, their responsibilities when on customer's premises, and their unrivalled opportunities for seeing and hearing for . themselves just what other companies and organisations are doing about industrial health and safety, can only mean one thing, in my view. The new legislation will profoundly affect road transport.
The new Health and Safety legislation derives from the report of the Robens committee of inquiry set up by Mrs Barbara Castle, then Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, in May, 1970. Two years later the committee reported to a Conservative Minister, Mr Maurice Macmillan, Secretary of State for Employment—the "productivity" tag had been dropped by the Heath Government. The report, "Safety and Health at Work," runs to 218 tightly written pages, yet its authors make no claim that it is definitive. Safety and health at work, said the committee, is a vast, diverse and, complex field of study such that no one can speak authoritatively on all of its facets and aspects.
The Robens inquiry terms of reference were as follows: "To review the provision made for the safety and health of persons in the course of their employment (other than transport workers while directly engaged on transport operations and who are covered by other provisions) and to consider whether any changes are needed in: (1) the scope or nature of major relevant enactments, or (2) the nature and extent of voluntary action concerned with these matters and to consider whether any further steps are required to safeguard members of the public from hazards other than general environmental pollution, arising in connection with activities in industrial and commercial premises and construction sites, and to make recommendations."
Note that transport workers directly engaged on transport operations were excluded from the subject matter of the inquiry. Yet a lorry or bus cab is a place of work! The Robens committee confessed in the preface to their report that transport safety and the subject of general environmental pollution were each huge areas of study in their own right.
"To have attempted to bring them within the compass of our work would have made for a virtually unmanageable inquiry," they said. "Nevertheless, there are many obvious connections between safety and health at work, public safety, transport safety and environmental pollution; and it can never be wholly satisfactory to discuss one set of problems in isolation from other sets of problems which are closely related. . . "
Changing attitudes
The committee felt they were precluded from going into the question of the safe transport of dangerous substances — "although this was a matter frequently raised with us during the course of the inquiry." In essence, the committee felt the whole subject of health and safety inter-related with many factors into which they were unable to probe but which were highly relevant. No employer or trade unionist must ignore the wider con.ext. As attitudes on both sides of industry change matters touching on safety and liaalth, not subject to specific laws or regulations, will affect behaviour.
Every year some 1000 people are killed at their work in this country, about 80 of them in road transport in non-road accidents. About half a million suffer injuries, many of them very serious ; 23 million working days are lost annually on account of industrial injury and disease.
Mad inflation
Before the days of mad inflation such figures were serious enough in terms of the human tragedies involved. Taking account of inflation, the monetary loss of productive time in unused machinery, vehicles standing idle, disrupted production, costly hospital and firstaid services, and unduly high insurance premiums, can be imagined, if not quantified.
Industrial accidents cannot be wholly prevented by laws or regulations, however Strictly enforced. Many of the worst malpractices in industry, had ventilation, poor lighting, unguarded machines, etc, were largely prevented by Factories Act and similar legislation operating over many decades. But today it is accepted that attitudes, capacities and performance of people and the efficiency of the organisational system within which they work are major factors in safe working.
The Robens Inquiry found that some four-fifths of accidents reported under the Factories Act arose from such apparently simple causes as handling materials, falling, striking against objects, being struck by falling objects, and the misuse of hand tools. Only one in six of such common accidents were said to have involved breach of a specific regulation. One of the strongest reasons for a new approach to Safety and Health protection in industry was a general realisation the the existing body of laws, enacted over a century or more, were far too complex for even personnel managers and works directors to understand. The archaic language of statutes is off-putting ; many inquiries received by bodies such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents reveal that professional managers and experienced trade unionists do not understand the meaning of some legislative requirements.
Although these laws, collectively, reduced industrial fatalities fourfold in the past 70 years the number of reported accidents has increased in recent years, suggesting that new factors such as growing apathy towards safety, or perhaps the increasing scale and complexity of modern industry, have halted the trend towards safer and healthier working. (No one concerned with the bulk Transport of hazardous cargoes can be unaware of the proliferation of new products, materials and mixtures, or of the need for thorough training of staff in their handling and movement.)
Three broad categories of safety and health legislation apply to workplaces. In the first category there are five major Acts, with their supporting orders and regulations, amongst which may be mentioned the Factories Act 1961 affecting 8million people in factories, shipyards, docks and construction sites.
About 8 million employees in offices, shops and railway premises are covered by the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act 1963. Both Acts are administered by the Department of Employment and are enforced partly by its Factory Inspectorate and partly by local authorities. Other Acts cover those employed in mines and quarrying and agriculture, w ith different controlling agencies, A second category includes a number of Acts providing for special control regimes over certain specified industrial activities and substances. Among these there are the Explosives Act 1875 (amended in 1923) controlling, by a system of licensing, the manufacture, storage and conveyance of conventional explosives, with enforcement divided between the Explosives Inspectorate of the Home Office and the local authorities, helped by the police.
Enforcement
The Home Office is responsible for the Petroleum (Consolidation) Act 1928, providing for the storage and conveyance. of petroleum spirit, mixtures and certain other substances. Day-to-day enforcement is in the hands of the local authorities. The Department of Trade and Industry and its Nuclear Installations Inspectorate admistar the Nuclear Installations Acts 1965 and 1969.
A third category comprises legislation dealing mainly with emissions and effluents from workplaces and it lies across the borderline between occupational safety legislation and the broad area of legislation dealing with public health and environmental pollution. This third category involves such Acts as The Radioaotive Substances Act 1960 and the Works Regulation Act of 1906 dealing with alkali, etc. Enforcement is by the Department of the Environment's Alkali and Clean Air Inspectorate and by the Pollution Inspectorate of the Scottish Development Department in Scotland.
No wonder that the Robens Inquiry concluded that there was too much law, with nine main groups of statutes supported by nearly 500 subordinate statutory instruments containing detailed provisions, often lengthy and complex. The committee agreed with witnesses who said that this sheer mass of law, far from advancing the cause of safety and health, may well have reached the point where it was counterproductive.
Official inspectors
Even if the number of official inspectors were greatly multiplied safety and health control would not necessarily improve. The committee underlined the basic truth : "The primary responsibility for doing something about the present levels of occupational accidents and diseases lies with those who create the risks and those whowork with them."
Next week : An outline of the new legislation.