Posted By Dave Wilson We already have that in the 'shall / shall not' areas of statute where this is before SFAIRP etc and in some cases is stand alone. "every employer shall maintain his equipment" etc 'Broken bulb' on company van in theory is a flagrant disregard and punishable in a criminal court. It won't make one iota of a difference I think

Posted By Sean Fraser I am a proponent of the goal-setting principle and it comes down to how it is tested in court. We all know that the Regs are the principle - HSE ACoP is persuasive as the means of how to achieve the principle - guidance, industry standardisation etc. provides a baseline in order to judge what is practicable, if not reasonable. But the ultimate tst that the court applies - and it does this is in ALL such cases, not confined to interpretation of H&S legislation - is what would be reasonable to the man on the street. In effect, what would the average person deem to be a reasonable response to a legislative requirement. Judgement on whether this has been met, maintained or exceeded follows. So, the balance of the test is ever changing and this is what makes the job a challenege. If it were prescriptive, then we would have no impetus to improve by becoming ever more efficient and/or effective. We have to actually think about what we do and why we do it - and we have the scope to change it to make it better. much as Jane has already pointed out.

Posted By Robert K Lewis Just to throw a pebble in the pond - My view is that the courts are constantly nibbling at the reasonably practicable term and moving towards a practicable interpretation. When a jury is confrnted with a case of a workplace death and a grieving family employers will have to have very strong grounds for rejecting an option that was practicable on the grounds that it was not reasonably so. Interest groups are also pushing at these goalposts and we can find this particularly in the rail environment. Gov. and regulator want ultimately to limit the spend whilst bereaved family and passenger groups press for the best possible.- Who can really fault their logic I certainly would not. Bob

Posted By Jack Can't expect a young whippersnapper like Bob to know about Robens!