The whole issue of professional independence as a safety and health practitioner is one I explored in a blog a few months ago. It’s fair to say that resulting opinions were divided between those that felt ideologically that practitioners must at all times put the safety and health of the workforce first, and those that felt that pragmatically this isn’t always possible. The point I raised was how a practitioner could, at all times, exercise independent professional judgement when the demands of running a business might be in conflict with this. The IOSH Code of Conduct says that ...

I had the pleasure this week of attending a seminar organised to launch new guidance on managing health and safety in research. The new guidance has been produced by the Universities Safety and Health Association in partnership with the UK Health and Safety Executive, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, and a number of research bodies. The new guidance adopts a straightforward, practical style, with information points throughout used to explain more technical points or explaining terminology. It utilises the familiar Plan-Do-Check-Act* model and references standardised approaches to risk management such as the HSE's 5 Steps to Risk Assessment. To help ...

Following the publishing of the independent panel’s review of the Hillsborough disaster there have been a number of calls for criminal action to be taken against those involved. In particular there have been calls for the organisations involved - South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Wednesday FC and the Football Association - to be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. This raises a number of interesting legal questions regarding the likely success of such action given the nature of the law that would apply. As the disaster occurred in 1989 it is the old common law of gross negligence manslaughter that ...

Every Tuesday night at Peel Park in Bradford, 40-50 kids of all ages (and a few dads who should know better) gather at the custom built BMX track for 3 hours worth of hard riding over the humps and bumps. This is an inherently risky activity. Kids and their dads occasionally fall off, often at some speed, and yes i've got the scars to prove it. So surely we should ban this activity for putting our cherished young ones at risk of harm? Thankfully not, the wider social benefits of physical exercise, social interaction and risk appreciation greatly outweigh the risk. ...

The UK government's Change 4 Life health promotion programme carries the tag line 'eat well, move more, live longer'. This came back to me recently during a five day city break in Barcelona. Our hotel was away from the city centre in the suburbs so we genuinely felt we were experiencing daily Catalan life. By way of observation it became clear that we came across far fewer overweight people that we might expect back in the UK, particularly children and young adults. Similarly I saw one McDonalds in the time we were there, and that was in the city centre. ...

Today is the last day of my three week holiday from work, back to it on Monday. And as you'd expect after an extended period away from it all, i'm feeling pretty relaxed and rested. I've resisted the temptation to look at my work PDA or pick up any voice messages. There are of course good physiological reasons why this is the case, the body generates increased levels of adrenaline and cortisol in response to the pressure of work and holidays provide a chance to turn these taps off and relax. Not everyone sees their annual leave allowance as a health ...

One of the challenges we face in managing sickness absence is communicating with GPs, particularly when it comes to complex work-related or work-relevant issues that are impacting on an employee’s health and keeping them away from work. Such issues are not always straightforward for GPs to understand and comprehend in the limited time they have during patient consultation and with their limited knowledge of the job and workplace. The introduction of the fit note has helped to some extent in that it prompts consideration of whether alternative duties might be appropriate and/or reasonable. However not all GPs consider that keeping ...

If I asked you what your understanding of the term ‘burnout’ was, you might describe someone who was completely exhausted, fed up of what they’re doing, someone who wants to do something different instead. Burnout is a term that has wide range of interpretation and uses across work, entertainment and sporting environments. In a work context it is closely aligned to that of work-related stress, however it is distinguished by factors relating to the interaction between an individual and the organisation. Burnout is characterised principally by extreme exhaustion, however two other dimensions differentiate it from work-related stress; the feelings of ...

Before you read any further, try something for me. Open up your internet browser, go to google.co.uk and type ‘lion steel’ into the search box. It’s likely the auto-fill feature will list ‘lion steel corporate manslaughter’ pretty high up the list of suggestions. Lion Steel Equipment Ltd became the third UK company to be prosecuted under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act that came into force in 2008. In fact Lion Steel pleaded guilty to the offence in a complicated arrangement with the prosecution that involved a number of health and safety offences and gross negligence manslaughter charges against 3 ...

I spent some time over the last couple of weeks marking health and safety law masters assignments. One of the questions asked students to examine the introduction of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act introduced in 2007 particularly in comparison to the common law offence it replaced*. Sensibly all of the students correctly identified a succession of high profile cases under the old common law that failed due to the absence of a directing mind within the organisation that could be be said to have be grossly negligent. Most highlighted the need to see the outcome of the third ...