http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/examples/employee.htm

Why do you need case law for this?

If someone is driving a LGV or anything else on public road they need an appropriate driving licence; that’s what the law says unambiguously. No need for any testing of this law, just a straightforward literal interpretation of the law as it is written.

For using vehicles on site then the issue is of how you (the employer) manage Health and Safety. There is clear unambiguous requirement that people are competent to do their job safely whatever it is, including driving a FLT. To establish competence you might decide that all your FLT drivers need to be qualified under a national scheme.  If you decide to adopt that approach and then allow someone to work without the required level of competency you have failed in your duty to manage the Health and Safety of your employees and others. Remember the Section 40 of the Health and Safety at Work Act makes it clear that it is for the employer to demonstrate that they are doing everything reasonably practicable to ensure the Health and Safety of employees and others.

Again there is no need for case law. It is clear in the way that the legislation is written.

Case law only becomes relevant is you are a) dealing with civil matters under common law, which derives solely from case law or b) cases where there is ambiguity in what the legislation as written actually means or c) if there is a difference between a literal interpretation of the law and a purposive approach where the law is looked at with the aim of establishing its underlying purpose rather than just looking at its literal meaning.

NEBOSH training spends a great deal of time getting people to memorise case law and they end up thinking that it is the be all and end all of H&S law. It ain’t.

This weeks Fake Britain on BBC1 had a piece regarding fake i.d.'s and showed the investigations being pursued by CTITB under "Fraud" laws including a tipper driver whose Plant Operators CSCS card was a forgery

No case law the Police were present with the CTITB investigator to arrest the person giving false representation

Originally Posted by: Invictus

does it matter why people put a post on here asking for information? They could want it for a number of reasons, training, proof that employees as well as employers can and do end up in court, to prove a point. If people don't want to or can't help they don't have to post.

Then that is not case law. Case law consists of actual legal cases from a court of record which demonstrate or explain a point of law. They establish precedents which other courts have to follow.

What the poster might be looking for ( I don’t know as they said case law) is examples of cases where someone has been prosecuted in which case the HSE database is a good place to start but as some has already said some of these prosecutions will under road traffic laws not H&S laws.

People often ask for something when they mean something else- it could well be that they wanted examples not case law but they asked for case law and I tried to explain why asking for that was mainly irrelevant, as there is almost certainly no case law on this matter.   

Not case law, but you may find this previous discussion interesting

http://forum.iosh.co.uk/posts/m685188-Moving-HGV-s-across-a-yard

Chris

Originally Posted by: MikeKelly

Hi AK at post 4

You seem to have limited your description of case law to (a) civil law only, apart from the mention of interpretation at (b) and (c).

In our business, of course many cases will be criminal and I also wouldn't go along with your view that written laws are always clearly understandable even if on the face of it that appears to be the situation. This is shown by the number of times even skilled/experienced judges differ, say by 3-2, 4-1 or 1-4 at, say, Supreme Court level.

I have to say I find myself often in the corner of the dissenting judge(s)=good old Denning, eh?

Regards

Mike

   

I have just looked at what I wrote and I realise that I was a bit wrong!Of course there is case law relating to criminal cases: R v
Octel, R v Natural History Museum Trustees, R v Swan Hunter Shipbuilder and
Telemeter Installations Ltd so name a few. But there is only few relevant to H&S compared to civil cases.

Of course in R v Natural History Museum Trustees the judges got risk and hazard mixed up but no one is perfect!

Edited by user 12 January 2017 15:35:45(UTC)  | Reason: spelling error