Keeping it legal with Lucy Cook

Nov 27 2007 By Lucy Cook, Dickinson Dees LLP

RECENT guidance published jointly by the Institute of Directors and the Health and Safety Commission aims to help businesses ensure effective workplace health and safety performance.

The role of directors in the management of health and safety is a topic which has been widely debated in recent years and many would argue that the Guidance is long overdue.

It is useful to summarise the Guidance in terms of Dos and Don’ts. The Dos include:

Ensure visible ownership and understanding of health and safety issues from the top of the organisation by nominating one of the board as the ‘champion’ of health and safety issues and providing health and safety training to some or all of the board. Make sure that health and safety becomes a key issue on the agenda for board meetings and conduct a board level review of health and safety performance at least once a year.

Engage the workforce in the promotion of safe and healthy working conditions. Encourage worker participation in monitoring working conditions and establish an open culture in which workers feel able to report incidents and near-misses.

Some of the Don’ts include:

Don’t assume that by producing a health and safety policy you have discharged your health and safety duties. The policy must be more than a document; it must be implemented in a way which ensures that it is integral to the organisation.

Don’t attempt to evade responsibility by turning a blind eye or by arranging the organisation’s business so that you are ignorant of health and safety issues. A director, company secretary or other senior officer of a company commits an offence if a health and safety offence committed by the company is committed with the consent, or connivance of that officer, or is due to any neglect on his part. The Court of Appeal recently made it clear that it is sufficient in such cases for the prosecution to show that there were circumstances that the officer ought to have known about.

The guidance dangles carrots by citing the benefits to business of improved health and safety performance such as reduced cost and risk, enhanced reputation and increased productivity.

The examples of bad practice met by tough penalties include a company director who received a 12 month custodial sentence for manslaughter following a fatal injury sustained by an employee who was in the process of maintaining a machine which had not been properly isolated.

To see the guidance in full, click here