Explain the duties relating to health and safety in the workplace

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Law for Business   Summative Assessment                         A B Ritchie

Explain the duties relating to health and safety in the workplace

Under the Employers Liability (Compulsory Insurance ) Act 1969, every employer carrying on a business must maintain an approved policy with authorised insurers covering any bodily injury or disease of employees which might arise out of or in the course of their employment

The principle Act governing Health & Safety in the workplace is The Health and Safety At Work Act 1974 which provides for a safe place at work governing all Employers, Employees, Contract Workers, Visitors and Maintenance Contracts.

The enforcing body is The Health & Safety Executive, Whose officers have wide ranging powers.  Officers may serve improvement or prohibitive notices which have far reaching consequences upon the offending organisation

Breaching Health & Safety Law can be both a criminal and civil offence and upon summary conviction substantial fines may be payable and under certain circumstances

Imprisonment   

The general statutory duties of the HSAW act

The Act imposes general duties on a number of different persons or categories of person.  Duties are imposed on  ; employers, manufacturers, designers, suppliers, the self employed, controllers of premises and employees.  Most of these duties are qualified in that the duty only extends to what is “reasonably practicable”  The effect of the qualification is to allow the person on whom the duty is placed to weigh up the seriousness of a risk and the likelihood of injury against the difficulty and expense of removing it.  Where difficulty and cost are high and a careful assessment shows that the risk of injury is significant, then it may be that no action need be taken.  However, if it is the case that the risk of injury or loss of life is high, then action must be taken whatever the cost and no allowance is made for the fact that it is a small organisation or that the business is struggling to survive

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It is for the person alleging that he has done” that which is reasonably practicable ” to establish it .  This is unusual, as normally in criminal prosecutions the procurator fiscal has to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt

General duties of employers

Section 2(1) imposes a general duty on an employer to ensure as far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees

Section 2(2)

Then continues by specifying five particular duties which spell out the general duty in detail

  1. To provide and maintain plant and systems at work ...

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