The Impact of The Health and Safety at Work Act
Last year the Health & Safety at Work Act (HSWA) was 50 years old and it’s my guess that most of you reading this will have started your working life benefiting from the protection it has brought workers under criminal law.
I too benefited from the legal protections the act brought all my working life, although I do recall starting my working career in the late 1970s in the shipbuilding industry which was noisy, polluting, dirty and still extremely dangerous, albeit I never came across any fatalities in my time working there.
Maybe this was because the shipbuilding industry was slowly improving its health & safety standards not only from the introduction of HSWA but also having suffered a significant tragedy a few years before I started working there.
The HMS Glasgow was being fitted out when early one morning as the day shift was starting, a highly enriched oxygen atmosphere was ignited, flashed over and killed eight men with six others being severely injured.
Brief History
This shipbuilding accident which in itself shaped the law in relation to protection of contractors, came very soon after the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act in 1974.
The Act stands as a cornerstone of British workplace legislation, marking a fundamental shift in how occupational safety was approached in the United Kingdom. Its origins can be traced to a period of significant industrial change and growing concern over workplace accidents and fatalities in the post-war era.
Prior to the HSWA, workplace safety in the UK was governed by a complex patchwork of regulations that had accumulated since the Industrial Revolution. These included the Factories Acts and various industry-specific regulations, which were often reactive rather than preventive in nature. The need for reform became increasingly apparent in the 1960s as industrial accidents continued to claim lives and affect workers' health.
The catalyst for change came in 1970 when the government commissioned Lord Alfred Robens to lead a committee reviewing workplace safety legislation. The resulting Robens Report, published in 1972, highlighted serious deficiencies in the existing system. It criticised the fragmentary nature of legislation and the excessive bureaucracy that hindered effective safety management.
The report's recommendations led directly to the creation of the Health and Safety at Work Act, which received Royal Assent in 1974.
The Act introduced several revolutionary concepts.
- It established a unified regulatory system for occupational health and safety, replacing hundreds of separate workplace regulations.
- It created a new enforcement body, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), to oversee workplace safety across all industries.
- Perhaps most significantly, the Act introduced the concept of "general duties," placing broad responsibilities on employers, employees, and manufacturers. This marked a shift from prescriptive rules to a more flexible, goal-setting approach. Employers were now required to ensure, "so far as is reasonably practicable," the health, safety, and welfare of all their employees.
The Act's impact has been profound.
It is estimated to have saved over 14,000 lives and countless injuries and ill health cases with the fatality rate decreasing significantly over time as can be seen in this statistics chart.
The legislation has proved remarkably adaptable and its influence extends beyond British shores, with many countries modelling their own workplace safety legislation on the HSWA's principles.
Conclusion
Today, the Health and Safety at Work Act remains the primary piece of workplace safety legislation in the UK, though it has been supplemented by various regulations addressing specific risks and industries.
Its enduring relevance speaks to the fundamental soundness of its approach to workplace safety management and the continued importance of protecting workers' wellbeing in an ever-evolving industrial landscape.
If you would like to read about four other significant pieces of legislation that affected our health & safety records, see Arinite’s March 2022 blog: March 2022 Monthly Blog – Laws That Changed Britain Forever.
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