At a recent board meeting, our Health and Safety policy was reviewed, as one does. One of our senior board members objected to the idea that safety should be viewed as being of EQUAL importance to financial or organisational probity. It may surprise some here that he wanted it to be of higher importance than those other two concerns. In fact, he said Health and Safety was a value not a goal – yes, he said it not me. In fact, I argued a little that most Health and Safety people try to get Health and Safety to taken as seriously as financial probity. Of course, I lost and now that ‘EQUAL’ phrase has been omitted. I consider this a massive victory, which I thought I’d share with others to remind us that there are employers out there who do care. The next review I’ll be trying for getting ‘Core Value’ in there somewhere…

Most of us I guess would agree with you that H&S is of equal but not greater importance than good financial and organisational standards. However, if the senior board member was keen to have the change he wanted, you may as well let him be happy with it. That reminds me of an episode from "Fawlty Towers" on TV in which I think Sybil Fawlty described a departing guest as 'a happy customer', and prompted Basil Fawlty to remark "in that case, perhaps we should have him stuffed" or words to that effect. :-) Graham B

If you're not in business, you don't have any employees. They don't then have sickness and/or injury problems related to your business. If there is insistence on finance as a prior concern, over health/safety, then you regard employees health as, basically, of less concern than money. If we had health and safety law based upon "an eye for an eye", we would have a much sharper employer focus upon health and safety. Falls from height, due to employers being more interested in money, would be much rarer if the employer was taken onto the roof, and thrown off it.

Johnmurry I may not have made my post clear. Finances are needed for a business to succeed, pay the wages, bills, materials, equipment, etc. A business cannot succeed without money but it can without safety. So my point........ the most important aspect of any business is money. I am not saying that H&S is not important in any business model, the money that is spent on H&S would mostly be proportionate to the income of the business and based on the risks. And this is why we have the 'reasonable practicable' element of the law.

RayRapp's comments at #8 prompt me to remark that I wish I could have a pint of beer for every health & safety policy I used to see which included a phrase like "health and safety is our top priority"! Such declarations might look impressive but in reality are far from accurate for all the reasons ably explained by other responders to this thread. Graham B