Health and Safety Gone Mad: HSE Myth Busting

Dodger says:

You are missing the point. Of course there is no specific legislation against, for example, throwing snowballs. What we do have is a wider legislation imposing a general responsibility to ensure the H&S of people in an environment for which you are responsible. This creates a legal liability and is leading some organisations to take a zero risk policy. Hence in a school playground snowball fights are banned in case a child gets injured leading to the parents suing the school for being negligent in allowing the injury to happen. It is possible or perhaps even likely the parents’ action would fail. However the school will either have to suffer the expense of defending an action or pay compensation to avoid the action. It is easier for the school to simply ban snowball fights. So while there is no specific law against snowball fights or conkers the H&S legislation has created a situation where schools will ban them.

15. 11. 2012 at 1:19 pm

Andy Trainer says:

Thanks for the comment – I think what you’re saying is correct to an extent but I would argue that the reason for these ‘zero tolerance’ approaches is more to do with misconceptions about legislation rather than the legislation itself, which was the tact I was trying for with the article. I think that the general media culture of demonising anything related to health and safety is partly to blame, but perhaps it also requires greater publicity of ‘real’ H & S regs.

Would you be in support of a relaxation of H & S regs generally or just greater education of them?

15. 11. 2012 at 2:04 pm

Dodger says:

Hi Andy

I don’t think this is about a lack of understanding of the law and the need for education but rather about how the legal system drives behaviours.

Law firms know that an organisation such as a school is likely to pay a (relatively) small claim rather than fight an expensive court case. The law firm gets paid with the added bonus that the failure to properly test the case means they can use their own untested cases as examples when pursuing other spurious claims.

As a rule schools and other organisations of any size have lawyers who do fully understand H&S legislation. However they also understand how the world works. It is very rare a legal adviser can give a definitive view on a hypothetical negligence case. As a result policy decisions are being made not on the basis of would we lose a case if tested in law but rather how do we avoid having to find out.

Even if the Government were to spell out that when a child gets hurt in a playground it doesn’t necessarily mean the school is at fault I’m not sure how much it would help. The genie is out of the bottle and it requires a school or rather their insurers to be brave enough to pop it back in.

So to answer your question re what I would support. My answer is any school authority that allows playground snowball fights or conker matches and says “See you in court” to the representatives of a schoolboy suffering a minor injury in such an event.

15. 11. 2012 at 5:36 pm

Andy Trainer says:

Hi Dodger

Again, I agree with you to a certain extent but I feel that placing the buck with either the school, legal firms or insurers is to let the government of the hook somewhat. I believe that it is important that everyone, not just institutions and their legal teams, is aware of the true legislation.

In fact, last night I was speaking about this topic to a friend of mine who was a deputy Head Teacher, and she said that it was often the case that in the first instance the school would blame a certain ban or restriction on Health and Safety rather than go to the effort of explaining to parents the real reasoning, whatever that may be. Parents being parents are much more receptive to a rule that is supposedly intended to keep their child safe than a rule that has been made to make things easier (or cheaper) for the school.

So I would argue that if parents were more informed about H & S regs, schools wouldn’t have the option of using as a get out clause. And in my opinion this means the responsibility falls to the government to educate the populace as to the true nature of Health and Safety, which they are beginning to do with initiatives like the HSE Myth Busting page as mentioned in the article.

Once again, thank you for the comment.

16. 11. 2012 at 9:33 am