Don’t wait for an accident to happen in your workplace before you do anything about health and safety. Think you’ll be okay so long as no one gets hurt? Think again! Failure to have appropriate health and safety procedures in place can bring massive fines against you and your business, even if an accident never occurs.

Recently, two construction companies, who were hired to build a new Lidl store in Nottingham, had to pay a total of £162,376 in fines and costs after they were charged under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. An accident never occurred at this site and no one was ever injured. However, Nottingham Crown Court found the two companies guilty of having applied inadequate day-to-day supervision and management resulting in health and safety breaches, including dangerous working at height, unsafe excavations and failure to wear the correct personal protective equipment (PPE). HSE inspector Martin Giles is quoted as saying, ‘Contractors are expected to organise health and safety effectively and take appropriate measures. Where standards are poor, HSE will prosecute those responsible, even if there has been no injury, as in this case."

This story illustrates the need for businesses to be proactive in how they approach health and safety legislation. Our service can help in this process. By using our Health and safety compliance review and policy creator document, you can easily draft a health and safety policy for your business and use the checklist it creates to ensure you are compliant. In the process our service will fully document your actions, ensuring that you can prove that you are proactively complying with health and safety law. In addition to using our documents, you can keep on top of your legal obligations as well as changes in legislation by reading our law guide and monthly bulletins like this one. Topics covered in this month’s issue are:

• Changes to Statutory Maternity and Adoptive Pay
• What you need to know about the UK smoking ban
• Recent tribunal case involving guarded machinery