1
CHAPTER
1.1 The scope and nature of occupational health
and safety╇ 2
1.2 Moral, legal and financial reasons for promoting
good standards of health and safety╇ 4
1.3 The legal framework for the regulation of health
and safety including sources and types of law╇ 8
1.4 The scope, duties and offences of employers,
managers, employees and others under the
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974╇ 21
1.5 The scope, duties and offences of employers,
managers, employees and others under the
Management of Health and Safety at Work
Regulations╇ 26
1.1  The scope and nature of
occupational health and safety
1.1.1  Introduction
Occupational health and safety is relevant to all branches
of industry, business and commerce including tradi-
tional industries, information technology companies, the
National Health Service, care homes, schools, universi-
ties, leisure facilities and offices.
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the foun-
dations on which appropriate health and safety man-
agement systems may be built. Occupational health
and safety affects all aspects of work. In a low hazard
organization, health and safety may be supervised by a
single competent manager. In a high hazard manufactur-
ing plant, many different specialists, such as engineers
(electrical, mechanical and civil), lawyers, medical doc-
tors and nurses, trainers, work planners and supervisors
may be required to assist the professional health and
safety practitioner in ensuring that there are satisfactory
health and safety standards within the organization.
There are many obstacles to the achievement of
good standards. The pressure of production or perfor-
mance targets, financial constraints and the complexity
of the organization are typical examples of such obsta-
cles. However, there are some powerful incentives for
Introduction to Health and Safety at Work. DOI:10.1016/B978-0-08-097070-7.10001-7
Copyright © 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011 Phil Hughes and Ed Ferrett. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Chapter Contents
1.6 The legal and organizational health and
safety roles and responsibilities of clients and
their contractors╇ 27
1.7 Further information╇ 33
1.8 Practice NEBOSH questions╇ 33
Appendix 1.1╇ Checklist for supply chain health and
safety management╇ 36
Appendix 1.2╇ Summary of application and
notification under CDM 2007╇ 37
Appendix 1.3╇ Pre-construction information╇ 38
Appendix 1.4╇ Construction phase plan╇ 39
 
organizations to strive for high health and safety stan-
dards. These incentives are moral, legal and economic.
Corporate responsibility, a term used extensively in
the 21st century world of work, covers a wide range of
issues. It includes the effects that an organization’s busi-
ness has on the environment, human rights and Third
World poverty. Health and safety in the workplace is an
important corporate responsibility issue.
Corporate responsibility has various definitions.
However, broadly speaking, it covers the ways in which
organizations manage their core business to add social,
environmental and economic value in order to produce
a positive, sustainable impact on both society and the
business itself. Terms such as ‘corporate social respon-
sibility’, ‘socially responsible business’ and ‘corporate
citizenship’ all refer to this concept.
The UK Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) mission
is to ensure that the risks to health and safety of workers
are properly controlled. In terms of corporate responsi-
bility,
â•…
it is working to encourage organizations to:
n improve health and safety management systems to
reduce injuries and ill health;
n demonstrate the importance of health and safety
issues at board level;
n report publicly on health and safety issues within
their organization, including their performance
â•…
against targets.

The HSE believes that effective management of health
and safety:
â•…
n is vital to employee well-being;
n has a role to play in enhancing the reputation of
businesses and helping them achieve high-perfor-
mance teams;
n is financially beneficial to business.
â•…
This chapter covers the legal responsibilities that exist
between people who control premises and those who
use them, and between contractors and those who hire
them; and the duties of suppliers, manufacturers and
designers of articles and substances for use at work.
The chapter also describes the legal responsibilities
that exist between duty holders under the Construction
(Design and Management), Regulations (CDM) to ensure
that health and safety is fully integrated into the man-
agement of any construction project and to encourage
everyone involved with the project (the client, designer
and principal contractor) to work together effectively.
1.1.2  Some basic definitions
Before a detailed discussion of health and safety issues
can take place, some basic occupational health and
safety
â•…
definitions are required.
Figure 1.1╇ At work
CHAPTER
Health and safety foundations 1 3
Health – The protection of the bodies and minds of
people from illness resulting from the materials, pro-
1
cesses or procedures used in the workplace.
Safety – The protection of people from physical
injury. The borderline between health and safety
is ill defined and the two words are normally used
together to indicate concern for the physical and
mental well-being of the individual at the place of
work.
Welfare – The provision of facilities to maintain the
health and well-being of individuals at the workplace.
Welfare facilities include washing and sanitation
arrangements, the provision of drinking water, heat-
ing, lighting, accommodation for clothing, seating
(when required by the work activity or for rest), eating
and rest rooms. First-aid arrangements are also con-
sidered as welfare facilities.
Occupational or work-related ill health – This is con-
cerned with those illnesses or physical and mental
disorders that are either caused or triggered by work-
place activities. Such conditions may be induced by
the particular work activity of the individual, or by
activities of others in the workplace. The time interval
between exposure and the onset of the illness may
be short (e.g. asthma attacks) or long (e.g. deafness
or cancer).
4 1.2 Moral, legal and financial reasons for promoting good standards of health and safety
Environmental protection – These are the arrangements
to cover those activities in the workplace which affect
the environment (in the form of flora, fauna, water,
air and soil) and, possibly, the health and safety of
employees and others. Such activities include waste
and effluent disposal and atmospheric pollution.
Accident – This is defined by the Health and Safety
Executive (HSE) as ‘any unplanned event that results
in injury or ill health of people, or damage or loss to
property, plant, materials or the environment or a loss
of a business opportunity’. Other authorities define
an accident more narrowly by excluding events
that do not involve injury or ill health. This book will
always use the HSE definition.
Near miss – This is any incident that could have
resulted in an accident. Knowledge of near misses is
very important as research has shown that, approxi-
mately, for every 10 ‘near miss’ events at a particular
location in the workplace, a minor accident will occur.
Dangerous occurrence – This is a ‘near miss’ which
could have led to serious injury or loss of life. Dan-
gerous occurrences are defined in the Reporting of
Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regu-
lations (often known as RIDDOR) and are always
reportable to the enforcement authorities. Examples
include the collapse of a scaffold or a crane or the
failure of any passenger-carrying equipment.
Hazard and risk – A hazard is the potential of a sub-
stance, person, activity or process to cause harm.
Hazards take many forms including, for example,
chemicals, electricity and working from a ladder. A
hazard can be ranked relative to other hazards or to a
possible level of danger.
A risk is the likelihood of a substance, activity or pro-
cess to cause harm. A risk can be reduced and the
â•…
hazard controlled by good management.
It is very important to distinguish between a hazard and
a risk – the two terms are often confused and activities
such as construction work are frequently called high risk
when they are high hazard. Although the hazard will con-
tinue to be high, the risks will be reduced as controls are
implemented. The level of risk remaining when controls
have been adopted is known as the residual risk. There
should only be high residual risk where there is poor
health and safety management and inadequate control
measures.
1.2  Moral, legal and financial reasons for
promoting good standards of health
and safety
The first concern of most managers when they start work
at a new organization is to understand the implications of
their new role and to form good relationships with other
members of the team. Concerns about health and safety
are often not a first or even second consideration. So
why bother about health and safety?
There are three basic drivers for good health and
safety management; these are moral, legal and financial
reasons. The moral reasons are centred on the need to
protect people from injury and disease while they are at
work. The legal reasons are embodied in the criminal
and civil law, and the financial reasons come as a con-
sequence of infringements of health and safety law with
the consequent fines, compensation payments, associ-
ated financial costs and even, in extreme cases, impris-
onment. Each of these reasons will now be discussed in
turn.
1.2.1  Moral reasons
The moral reasons are supported by the occupational
accident and disease rates.
Accident rates
Accidents at work can lead to serious injury and even
death. Although accident rates are discussed in greater
detail in later chapters, some trends are shown in Tables
1.1–1.4. A major accident is a serious accident typically
involving a fracture of a limb or a 24-hour stay in a hospi-
tal. An ‘over 3-day accident’ is an accident which leads
to more than 3 days off work. Statistics are collected on
all people who are injured at places of work – not just
employees.
It is important to note that since 1995 suicides and
trespassers on the railways have been included in the
HSE figures – this has led to a significant increase in the
figures.
Table 1.1 gives details of accidents involving all peo-
ple at a place of work over a 4-year period. In 2009/10,
there were 393 fatal injuries to members of the public,
and over 70% of these were due to acts of suicide or
trespass on the railways. During the year, 152 workers
were killed at work (0.5 per 100,000 workers). Of the
main industrial sectors, construction and agriculture had
the highest number of fatalities, accounting for 42 and
38 respectively.
Table 1.2 shows, for the year 2009/10, the accident
breakdown between employees, self-employed and
members of the public.
Table 1.3 shows the figures for employees only and
shows that there has been a decline in fatalities and
major accidents since 2006/07.
Table 1.4 gives an indication of accidents in different
employment sectors for 2009/10. There were 26,061
reported major injuries to employees, the most common
causes being slipping or tripping (41%), and falls from
a height (16%). A further 95,369 injuries to employees
caused an absence from work of over three days. Of
these injuries, the most common causes were handling,
lifting or carrying (36%), and slipping or tripping (24%).
These figures indicate that there is a need for health
and safety awareness even in occupations which many
would consider very low hazard, such as the health ser-
vices and hotels. In fact over 70% of all deaths occur
 CHAPTER
Health and safety foundations 1 5

Table 1.1  Accidents involving all people at a place of work

Injury 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10

1
Death 662 587 605 545
Major 47 511 47 326 52 747 53 004
Over 3-day 115 799 109 912 106 192 96 271

Table 1.2  Accidents for different groups of people for 2009/10

Deaths Major Over 3 day

Total 545 53 004 96 271
Employees 111 26 061 95 369
Self–employed 41 1 035 902
Members of the public 393 25 908 n/a

Table 1.3  Accidents involving employees in the workplace

Injury 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10

Death 191 179 127 111
Major 28 544 28 199 27 894 26 061
Over 3-day 114 653 108 795 105 261 95 369

Table 1.4  Accidents (per 100,000 employees) to all diseases mainly due to past working conditions. The
employees in various employment sectors (2009/10) industry sectors having ill-health rates higher than the
rate for all industries in 2009/10, were health and social
Sector Deaths Major work, and public administration.
Agriculture 7.3 242.1 In 2009/10, there were an estimated 1.3 million people
in the UK suffering from work-related illness, of whom
Construction 2.7 230.0
555,000 were new cases in that year. This led to 23.4
Transport 2.2 374.5 million working days lost compared to 5.1 million due
Manufacturing 0.9 162.4 to workplace injury. A further 800,000 former work-
ers claimed that they were still suffering from an illness
Retail and wholesale 0.8 238.3
caused or made worse by work.
Hotel and catering 0.1 65.2 Occupational asthma is the UK’s fasting growing
Health services 0 91.2 workplace disease and affects between 1,500 and 3,000
people each year. Every year in the UK, 7,000 people are
thought to contract occupational asthma that is either
in the service sector and manufacturing is considerably caused by their work or is made worse by it. In some
safer than construction and agriculture. These latter two cases people are left disabled and unable to work.
industries accounted for almost half of all fatal injuries to Ill-health statistics are estimated either from self-
workers in 2009/10. reported cases (Table 1.5) or from data supplied by
Although there has been a decrease in fatalities hospital specialists and occupational physicians. The
since 2006/07, there is still a very strong moral case for number of self-reported cases will always be much
improvement in health and safety performance. higher than those seeking advice from hospital-based
specialists (Table 1.6). Data from 300 general practitio-
Disease rates ners (GPs) confirms that musculoskeletal disorders are
Work-related ill-health and occupational disease can the most common type of work-related illness, but that
lead to absence from work and, in some cases, to death. mental ill health (usually caused by stress) accounts for
Such occurrences may also lead to costs to the State more working days lost.
(the Industrial Injuries Scheme) and to individual employ- Recent research has shown that one in five people
ers (sick pay and, possibly, compensation payments). who are on sickness leave from work for 6 weeks will
Each year thousands of people die from work-related stay off work and leave paid employment.
6 1.2 Moral, legal and financial reasons for promoting good standards of health and safety

Table 1.5  Self-reported work-related illness for 2009/10 Table 1.7  Number of enforcement notices issued over
a 3-year period by the HSE
Prevalence
Type of illness (thousands) Year Improvement notice Prohibition notice
Musculoskeletal disorders of the 248 2007/08 4528 3212
back 2008/09 4825 3210
Musculoskeletal disorders of the 230 2009/10 5811 3896
neck or upper limbs
Musculoskeletal disorders of the 94
lower limbs Table 1.8    Number of prosecutions by the HSE over
a 3-year period
Musculoskeletal disorders in total 572
Stress, depression or anxiety 435 Offences
Breathing or lung problems 57 Year prosecuted Convictions

Infectious diseases 38 2007/08 1028 839

Other (e.g. skin or heart problems) 164 2008/09 1099 837

Total 1266 2009/10 1026 735

Table 1.6  Proportion (%) of cases and certified days lost HSE present 80% of the prosecutions and the remainder
due to work-related ill-health reported by General Practitioners are presented by Local Authority Environmental Health
in 2009/10 Officers.
In 2009/10, the HSE issued 9,734 enforcement
Certified days notices, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) issued 36
Type of illness Diagnosis lost and the local authorities issued 6,110 notices. Thus a
total of 15,881 enforcement notices were issued by all
Musculoskeletal 53 37
enforcing authorities. 1,033 offences were prosecuted by
disorders
the HSE and ORR, resulting in 737 convictions. Those
Mental ill health 31 55 organizations found guilty of health and safety offences
(stress, anxiety) received fines totalling £11.6 million, giving average
Dermatitis and 10 3 penalties on conviction of £15,817 per breach. In the
other skin disorders same year, the local authorities prosecuted a total of 287
Other diagnosis 4 4 offences resulting in 254 convictions and fines totaling
including infections £2.1 million, giving average penalties on conviction of
£8,102 for each breach.
Respiratory disease 2 2
Most of these prosecutions were for infringements
Hearing loss 0.1 0.4 of the Construction Regulations (including the Work at
Height Regulations) and the Provision and Use of Work
Equipment Regulations.
1.2.2  Legal reasons There are clear legal reasons for sound health and
The legal reasons concerning the employer’s duty of safety management systems.
care in criminal and civil law will be covered later in this
chapter. 1.2.3  Financial reasons
Some statistics on legal enforcement indicate the
legal consequences resulting from breaches in health Costs of accidents
and safety law. There have been some very high com- Any accident or incidence of ill-health will cause both
pensation awards for health and safety cases in the Civil direct and indirect costs and incur an insured and an unin-
Courts and fines in excess of £100,000 in the Criminal sured cost. It is important that all of these costs are taken
Courts. Table 1.7 shows the number of enforcement into account when the full cost of an accident is calcu-
notices served over a 3-year period by the HSE. Most lated. In a study undertaken by the HSE, it was shown that
notices are served in the manufacturing, construction indirect costs or hidden costs could be 36 times greater
and agricultural sectors. Local authorities serve 40% than direct costs of an accident. In other words, the direct
of all improvement notices and 20% of all prohibition costs of an accident or disease represent the tip of the
notices. iceberg when compared to the overall costs (Figure 1.2).
Table 1.8 indicates the number of prosecutions by the In 2009/10, 28.5 million days were lost overall (1.2 days
HSE over the same 3-year period, and it can be seen that per worker) of which 23.4 million were due to work-related
approximately 80% of those prosecuted are convicted. ill-health and 5.1 million were due to workplace injury.
 CHAPTER
Health and safety foundations 1 7

Accident Iceberg

£1
Insured costs 1
Injury, ill health
damage

Uninsured costs
Product and material damage
£8-36 Legal costs
Emergency supplies
Cleaning up site
Production delays
Temporary labour
Lost orders
Investigation time
Fines
Loss of expertise etc.

Figure 1.2╇ Insured and uninsured costs

There is a strong moral and economic case to do more
to reduce this unacceptable level of injury and ill health in
the workplace.
1.2.4  Societal expectations of good
standards of health and safety
Societal expectations are not static and tend to rise over
time, particularly in a wealthy nation like the UK. For
example, the standards of safety accepted in a motor car
50 years ago would be considered to be totally inade-
quate at the beginning of the 21st century. People expect
safe, quiet, comfortable cars that do not break down and
which retain their appearance for many thousands of
miles. Industry should strive to deliver these same high
standards for the health and safety of employees or ser-
vice providers. The question is whether societal expec-
tations are as great an influence on workplace safety
standards as they are on product safety standards. Soci-
ety
â•…
can influence standards through:
n p eople only working for good employers. This is
effective in times of low unemployment;
n national and local news media highlighting good
and bad employment practices;
1.2.5  The business case for health
and safety
The business case for health and safety is centred on
the potential costs of poor standards of health and
safety. Fines in excess of £250,000 and even higher
levels of compensation payments are not uncommon.
As mentioned earlier, the costs may be direct or indi-
rect and insured or uninsured. Some examples of these
follow.
Direct costs
These are costs which are directly related to the accident
and may be insured or uninsured.
â•…
Insured direct costs normally include:
n c  laims on employers and public liability
insurance;
n damage to buildings, equipment or vehicles;
n any attributable production and/or general
business loss;
â•…n the absence of employees.
Uninsured direct costs include:
â•…

n schools teaching good standards of health and n fi

safety;
n the purchase of fashionable and desirable safety
equipment, such as trendy crash helmets for n some damage to product, equipment, vehicles or
mountain bikes;
n buying products only from responsible �companies.
The difficulty of defining what is responsible has
been partly overcome through ethical investment
criteria but this is possibly not widely enough
understood to be a major influence;
n watching TV and other programmes which improve
safety knowledge and encourage safe behaviour
from an early age.
 nes resulting from prosecution by the enforcement
authority;
n sick pay;
process not directly attributable to the accident
(e.g. caused by replacement staff);
n increases in insurance premiums resulting from the
accident;
n any compensation not covered by the �insurance
policy due to an excess agreed between the
employer and the insurance company;
n legal representation following any compensation
claim.