“We’d urge that our UK self-employed working population shouldn’t be exempt from the protection the law currently affords them" http://www.iosh.co.uk/ne...rons_monster_attack.aspx In what way are the genuinely self employed protected by H&S law?

I think it's the current requirement for risk assessment etc. that may be removed for non hazardous/low risk work? Problem there is where is the fine line to be drawn and it will be self assessment.

With respect to construction, and construction-engineering self-employed. Please remember that a significant, and large number of self-employed workers are NOT self-employed under current HMRC regulation. They are REGISTERED as self-employed but continue as self-employed under false employment conditions only. Note: "circumstances, all of which impact on working conditions. The excessive number of hours worked and some of the other employment issues to which my hon. Friend referred are important factors, but we must discuss those in the context of the industry's poor record on all areas of employment, including training, health and safety and site conditions. The industry's culture and attitude is often adversarial and aggressive, and for too long it has paid too little attention to the position of workers and the conditions in which they work …" From: www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00196.pdf Self-employment in the construction industry Which will complicate things very considerably, since you may well be treating someone as self-employed who is not. Note the "checklist": "HM Revenue & Customs’ general advice on determining employment status does not give a checklist of factors, but indicates the points which influence the court’s decision in these cases, by giving a series of questions:8 An individual worker is likely to be employed if the answer is ’yes’ to most of the following questions. • Does the worker have to do the work themselves? • Can you tell the worker where to work, when to work, how to work or what to do? • Can you move the worker from task to task? • Does the worker have to work a set number of hours? • Is the worker paid a regular wage or salary? • Can the worker get overtime pay or bonus payments? • Is the worker responsible for managing anyone else engaged by you? Your worker is likely to be self-employed if the answer is ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions. • Can the worker hire someone to do the work, or take on helpers at their own expense? • Can the worker decide where to provide the services of the job, when to work, how to work and what to do? • Can the worker make a loss as well as a profit? • Does the worker agree to do a job for a fixed price regardless of how long the job may take? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, your worker is still likely to be self-employed if you can answer ‘yes’ to most of the following questions. • Does the worker risk his own money? • Does the worker provide the main items of equipment (not the tools that many employees provide for themselves) needed to do the job? • Does the worker have to correct unsatisfactory work in their own time and at their own expense? " And: The new guidance stated that “people are self-employed if they are in business on their own account and bear the responsibility for its success or failure”, and went on to give a number of pointers which indicate if this was the case or not in any particular job of work: • the degree of direction or control a contractor had over the worker; • whether the worker supplied any expensive or heavy equipment to do this work; • the degree of financial risk faced by the worker in taking on the job; • whether the worker could hire and pay someone else to do this work; and, • the length of time the contract was for. Even though the length of the worker’s engagement was only one of these pointers, there was considerable concern that a contract for a given amount of time, say three months, would necessarily qualify as employment. The department’s guidance was at pains to emphasize this was not the case: The length of engagement may be a factor, but will not be decisive. You must consider the terms of the engagement even where a worker is engaged for only a day. Long periods working for one contractor may be typical of an employment, but even a very short-term engagement could amount to employment" "