Health and safety compliance in the workplace is often considered a burden rather than a benefit and there is good reason for thinking this way. The list of compliance legislation is extensive and includes amongst others; The Health and Safety act 1974, The Asbestos Regulations 2006, The Regulatory Reform Order (Fire safety) 2006, The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2006 and the list goes on.
So let us look at the detail and show how taking a systematic approach to compliance issues can save money on a day-to-day basis but also make the business more resilient and less likely to the subject of any civil litigation. Our experience is, that unless your company breaches the legislation to an exceptional level, it is most likely that the real cost to your bottom line will be in the form of civil litigation either from the health and safety executive or from the individuals concerned. In other words you will become a victim of today’s compensation culture. Notwithstanding this, systematic and persistent breaches of compliance legislation now carries the risk of prosecution under The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 which is aimed at ensuring that company Directors are directly held to account for failures in complying with health and safety legislation.
Let us take fire safety for instance. Under The Regulatory Reform (Fire safety) Order 2005 all businesses within the United Kingdom (with very few exceptions) are required to carry out an annual fire risk assessment by a competent person and act on the findings. Often these assessments produce a long list of things to be done without any assessment as to how important, or costly, these breaches in fire safety are. At Signal Surveyors we carry out a fully detailed fire risk assessment and we assess the cheapest method of reducing the risk to a sensible level, prioritise those breaches, and manage the work on site to eliminate those risks. Therefore Signal Surveyors concentrate on the aspects of compliance that make a difference to your bottom line.
