Overview of the law

The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, also referred to as HASAW or HSW, is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health and safety in the United Kingdom.

The Health and Safety Executive is responsible for enforcing the Act and a number of other Acts and Statutory Instruments relevant to the working environment.

Statutory instruments are the secondary types of legislation made under specific Acts of Parliament. These cover a wide range of subjects, from control of asbestos at work, diving, escape and rescue from mines, ionising radiation and working at height.

Some (but not by any means, all) of the essential features of Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 are as follows:

• It requires all employers to provide, as far as is reasonably practicable, a healthy and safe workplace.
• It requires employers to take care not only of their employees but also of other people visiting the worksite. This of course includes contractors as well as visitors and paying customers.
• It requires employees to take reasonable precautions for the safety of themselves and of others.
• It requires site operators to prevent, as far as practicable, emission of toxic substances into the general atmosphere.

These duties are qualified in the Act by the principle of ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’. In other words, an employer does not have to take measures to avoid or reduce the risk if they are technically impossible or if the time, trouble or cost of the measures would be grossly disproportionate to the risk. What the law requires here is what good management and common sense would lead employers to do anyway: that is, to look at what the risks are and take sensible measures to tackle them.

HSW also established the Health and Safety Commission (HSC), and the executive arm of the HSC, the Health and Safety Executive, which has responsibility for enforcing the law, having taken over the various original Inspectorates