The new UK coalition government has appointed a special advisor, Lord Young, to review the UK growth of “compensation culture” and specifically to consider a complete overhaul of current health and safety legislation. Following on from his original brief in December before the new government came into power, the formal review is due to start this week and his findings are due by the end of July and will then be reviewed by the government.
Originally introduced in 1974 to protect staff working in factories and chemical plants where there were obvious and very real dangers, Health and Safety rules have now become part of everyday life and few people can avoid them day to day.
UK wide there have been numerous cases of over zealous interpretation, implementation and enforcement of Health and Safety laws even down to plainly ridiculous levels such as restaurants refusing to give customers tooth picks in case they injure themselves!
One of the suggestions of most interest to us is the possibility of removing completely the requirement to follow Health and Safety laws in non dangerous environments such as every day offices.
Lord Young is quoted as saying that we need a system which is “proportionate and not bureaucratic” and that many current rules are “absolute nonsense”.
Whilst on the surface this is very encouraging we are worried about the implications of this for the cleaning industry – would this mean that contract cleaners working in office enviroments would no longer be required to comply with health and safety legislation? What would this mean for COSHH assessments for chemical usage? Would risk assessments still need to carried out? Would removing this requirement completely open the door to more cowboy cleaning contractors who use unsafe products in unsafe ways with little or no regard to employee, customer or staff welfare?
Of course, an office is not the most dangerous working environment but there are still dangers present and, in our opinion, we do still need some form of legislation and guidance on how to protect staff, customers and members of the public. As quoted by Lord Young we need proportionate legilsation and that which is appropriate for the environment concerned and risk involved.
We will watch this story with interest over the coming weeks and months and post any relevant updates as soon as we have them.
Tags: chemical plants, dangerous environments, health, health and safety legislation, legislation, office, requirement, ridiculous levels, safety, staff welfare
I found this article interesting for 2 reasons.
1. My background is in soft services provision both as a contractor and as a client.
2. I have a Health & Safety consultancy providing services to SME’s some of whom are Cleaning organisations.
My interpretation with the information available would be that any cleaning company has a duty of care to their employees and their clients to ensure a place of work that is safe and free from the risk of harm. To achieve that they will still have a responsibility to provide and maintain the appropriate documentation. They should also provide safe equipment and materials. For there to be a change in the legislation to remove some areas such as offices would actually create a huge amount of work, since most of it is passed as statute law through parliament.
It is more likely that the guidance supporting the legislation will be amended to make it less onerous. An office is certainly less dangerous than a machine workshop, however there are more claims for compensation because there are less control measures for example there is less Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) or Work Related Upper Limb Disorders or (WRULD’s) in a workshop than an office. How are these going to be dealt with if the office is removed from the legislation?
I believe that you, as an employer will still have to continue as you are and so will your competitors, it is the people working in the offices who might be less supported, although knowing the legal profession they will vigorously defend anything that might affect their income stream.