Posted By Raymond Rapp You would need to understand the objectives of HASWA before you could properly determine whether it 'met the aspirations of lord Robens.' Bearing in mind, since the introduction of HSWA there has been a plethora of legislation largely from the EU. Could Lord Robens et al have anticipated this and also the change from a predominately industrial workforce to a service sector? Ray

Posted By Colin Reeves One of his aims was to move from a prescriptive legislatory regime to one where the employer had to show that he considered all the risks and put in place measures to mitigate these. The plethora of individual specific regulations flowing from the EU tend towards the prescriptive type of legislation that HASWA was trying to get away from. I suspect he would be disappointed at the micro-management of present day regs (forced on us by a bureaucratic EU) rather than his vision. Colin

Posted By Jay Joshi It is a huge misunderstanding to view the HSE ACoPs and Guidance material that accompanies regulations as "Prescriptive" and compare then to the text of the directives! Even Lord Robens has foreseen the need for ACoPs and Guidance, but he expected industry to be more proactive in producing its ACoPs and Guidance On each and every ACOP and Guidance from HSE, it is made explicitly clear that :- This Code has been approved by the Health and Safety Commission, with the consent of the Secretary of State. It gives practical advice on how to comply with the law. If you follow the advice you will be doing enough to comply with the law in respect of those specific matters on which the Code gives advice. You may use alternative methods to those set out in the Code in order to comply with the law. However; the Code has a special legal status. If you are prosecuted for breach of health and safety law, and it is proved that you did not follow the relevant provisions of the Code, you will need to show that you have complied with the law in some other way or a court will find you at fault. The Regulations and Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) are accompanied by guidance which does not form part of the ACOP. Following the guidance is not compulsory and you are free to take other action. But if you do follow the guidance you will normally be doing enough to comply with the law. Health and safety inspectors seek to secure compliance with the law and may refer to this guidance as illustrating good practice.

Posted By Adrian Watson I agree with Bob, why do we have so many regulations and why do HSE gold-plate every EU directive? We have gone beyond the point of madness and are losing sight of what we desire; safer workplaces not fewer workplaces. Regards Adrian

Posted By peter gotch 1 Hi Guys I challenge you to come up with anything in the Framework Directive or the Workplace Directive that was not explicity or implicity required by prior U.K. legislation!?!? p

Posted By martinw Well said the ISA is a worthy cause but it is a knee-jerk reaction, and as such, it is likely that things will have been missed when it comes to appeals agains barring etc. Muddy law in some ways.

Posted By Cliff Davis How many times can we get the word "plethora" in a quantity of responses??. There seems to be a plethora of responses to this thread, mmmm.

Posted By Robert K Lewis I think Jonr does well to remind us that all human beings are flawed. Robens was flawed in many ways but ultimately had a vision of a workplace in which the employer not only had a duty of care to his employees but to society at large for matters arising from his business. Without Robens we may not have seen compensation for non workers near asbestos factories or a concern for environmental issues on the scale we now see. Even flawed people such as ourselves are capable of good. Bob

Posted By Jay Joshi The "recent" Corporate Manslaugther Legislation does cannot be used against senior individual managers/directors etc of any organisation.

Posted By jonr Some interesting responses. It was 1997 when the fund money was repaid, time has flown and I thought it was more recent. They were actually deprived of 30 years accrued interest and not 40 years. I therefore withdraw any implied suggestion that the Labour government were cynical and callous to not properly compensate the fund, a government (coincidentally Labour) that robbed it in the first place. We now know that their interests lie more in compensating M.P.s for duck houses and second homes bought for the express purpose of claiming expenses. Calling Robens flawed is akin to saying that Hitler was a committed vegetarian for compassionate reasons, but was flawed in other ways. I am aware that Corporate Manslaughter legislation would be levelled at an organisation and not at individuals. However, a successful prosecution would pave the way for individual prosecutions for gross negligence manslaughter. (This is why many company directors are now acting to ensure that their houses are in order). Many warnings were given about the danger of these coal tips and the streams that undermined them. They were ignored. Robens was the man at the top. I would suggest that any subsequent good work done by Robens was of little comfort to the parents who had to dig their children out of that school.