A Review of Health and Safety

Businesses, voluntary organisations and local authorities will no doubt welcome Lord Young’s proposals to clarify health and safety requirements for low hazard occupations and activities.

Although the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 has been an effective piece of legislation, with the UK experiencing the lowest number of non-fatal accidents in Europe, Lord Young considers that the blanket application of health and safety rules has created an overly bureaucratic system and a climate of fear of litigation that is stifling economic activity.

Lord Young blames insurers for exacerbating the situation by what he describes as ‘over interpretation’ of health and safety legislation. He is particularly critical of the practice adopted by some insurers of insisting on health and safety risk assessments from external consultants before offering accident insurance policies to small and medium sized companies.

He recommends for this practice to be stopped for companies operating in low hazard environments.

Why have insurers moved in this direction? Because businesses continue to struggle to comply with the myriad requirements of health and safety legislation, which means the ability to defend claims is compromised and the overall cost of claims has increased.

Lord Young’s proposals aim to address these problems. For example, a proposal to simplify the requirements for the risk assessment procedure for low hazard workplaces (e.g. offices, classrooms and shops) should make compliance easier. The introduction of an accreditation system for health and safety consultants should bring some uniformity into the system and make their advice less risk averse.

Insurers have been invited to play their part by carrying out a consultation exercise to ensure that worthwhile activities are not unnecessarily curtailed on health and safety grounds. They are to produce a code of practice on health and safety for businesses and the voluntary sector.  Whilst this is certainly a worthwhile exercise, it will have to be consistent with current law, and it may be a challenge to keep it as short and simple as Lord Young envisages.

In addition, it is unclear how this would interact with the work of The Health and Safety Executive who have also been invited to produce clear separate guidance for small and medium businesses under the Code of Practice.

 Lord Young hopes to bring the cost of claims down and he is supportive of the proposals made by Lord Jackson for simplifying the claims procedure for personal injury compensation claims.  We understand that government plans for this are still subject to the consultation process, which will be undertaken shortly.

We will be closely following the process through our representational body, the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, through whom input may be made should clients have any particular issues they wish to be raised.