Health and Safety: Truths or Urban Myths
January 16th, 2008In the United Kingdom (UK), Health and Safety often gets a bad press – In fact, you might be forgiven for wondering how anything actually gets done given the raft of Safety rules and regulations reported in their national papers.
Health and Safety is regulated through the Health and Safety at Work Act, a short and simple piece of legislation dating from 1974, which states that employers have a duty to secure the Health, Safety and welfare of people at work and also to protect the public from risks arising out of work activity.
The Act also allows the government to make regulations to help achieve this. Some of these regulations are general and cover all workplaces, such as the need for a risk assessment, others are specific to a sector, such as construction or the chemical industry.
The Health and Safety at Work Act, and regulations made under it, are enforced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and local authorities.
Behind the Headlines
The British Trade Union Council’s (TUC) WorkSmart looked at some of the stories from recent years and tried to track down the truth behind them. They found that some are just not true, and many others are misrepresentations of the truth.
This doesn’t mean that every Health and Safety story we read about is made up. In some cases regulations have been wrongly interpreted. In other examples employers have used Health and Safety as an excuse for not doing something which they did not want to do anyway, or as an excuse for saving money.
Take the Quiz
So they compiled an online quiz for you about some of the stories that made the headlines. It makes for interesting reading, even if you do not follow the stories from the UK press. Like the one about the church that had to pay £1300 to get their light bulbs changed because of Health and Safety regulations.
The quiz allows you to decide between truth and myth, calculates your score and gives you the story behind the story.
Can you guess which are which?
