Health and safety can be an emotive subject. It gets a lot of bad press in the UK. Every week you hear about some nonsense or other that reinforces that health and safety is out to spoil everyoneâs fun, ridiculously disproportionate or just plain silly. Or you hear lots of stories about how not enough was done, how someone or other must be held to account, and how on earth this can be happening again. Itâs enough to make you want to write a strongly worded letter to The Times!
But, believe it or not, health and safety professionals get just as frustrated with this as you do â and theyâre not out there to spoil your fun or to surround you with red tape. In fact, many rather like having fun themselves.
The next few sections offer some perspective on health and safety, so that you can understand what itâs really about (and save you from believing all the bad press and silly stories).
Cutting through the hype
Quite a few (though not all) of the stories you hear in the news berating health and safety have nothing to do with health and safety. In fact, theyâre often down to local policies and decisions, and health and safety is simply an excuse or a smokescreen used to hide a decision that has already been made for other reasons.
As a result, in the popular mind-set, health and safety can be seen as a reason for not doing things. Indeed, this idea has become somewhat of a comic stereotype in the UK â with âelf and safetyâ providing the incontestable, final word. But try it on your nearest and dearest and see how far it gets you: âIâm not cleaning the toilet today â health and safety â I might fall into the bowlâ; âKids, Iâm not taking you to that birthday party today â health and safetyâ. Youâll find that your excuses quickly wear thin!
In reality, people manage risks perfectly well when itâs something they want or need to do. For example, you can apply risk management principles to oil production (the source of many modern-day chemicals, and used to make plastics and fuel your car), power generation or even simply driving a car.
The UKâs main health and safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), became so fed up with health and safety being used as an excuse to ban things that it set up a âmyth-busters challenge panelâ. Itâs dedicated to challenging some of the more ridiculous health and safety excuses that have been reported to them by outraged members of the public. The idea is that the panel investigates the circumstances and reports their thoughts on the matter. That is, do they think that the reasons given are really due to health and safety â or do they think that health and safety is being used as an (unconvincing) excuse?
The panelâs answer is just its opinion â it isnât legally binding. So, it doesnât mean that you can enforce an appeal. But it does mean that you can challenge the reason for the apparently poor decision. (The real reason may simply be that someone was looking for an excuse not to run an event, for example. Thatâs fair enough, and often entirely up to the decision-maker in question, but they shouldnât be calling it a health and safety reason when it isnât. They should come clean and give you the real reason.)
Many cases heard by the panel surround events that have been run for years but get cancelled or unreasonably constrained on the basis of some made-up health and safety reason.
Here are a couple of examples to brighten your day, which just goes to show how much fun it must be working for the HSE:
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Custard pie fight: âA custard pie fight at a local event has been cancelled because the event organisers could not get insurance on the basis that the activity is too dangerousâ.
The myth-busters panel concluded that this was just a case of âover-the-top risk aversionâ and there was no real danger. Instead, everyone missed out on some harmless fun.
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A night in the museum: âA national museum is hosting a âsleepoverâ event and has advised those attending that they can bring a foam mattress to sleep on but not an inflatable one on the grounds of health and safetyâ.
The myth-busters panel couldnât think of a convincing health and safety reason for this. Their conclusion is that the museum needs to justify it â not just blame health and safety when it isnât a health and safety issue.
According to the HSE, one of the reasons cited for disproportionate interpretations of safety requirements is a fear of being sued. With the ease of access to no-win, no-fee lawyers, people have the perception that anyone can sue for just about anything, however trivial, and get away with it. But thereâs little evidence that being sued for trivial things happens much in practice â the law, in most places around the world, does at least grasp the concept of reasonableness; frivolous cases usually get dismissed or thrown out (but obviously with the aid of a safety net).
Of course, the fear of being sued is not to be sneezed at, and many organisations develop unnecessarily in-depth health and safety management plans to protect their business. The nearby sidebar, âReclaiming health and safetyâ, looks at the disproportionate application of health and safety regulations in more detail. It also points out th...
