IOSH forums home
»
Our public forums
»
OSH discussion forum
»
Explanation of the Legal Status of HSE Guidance
Rank: Guest 
|
Posted By Robert S Woods
I'm looking for a good easy to understand explanation of the legal status of HSE guidance. Any help would be appreciated.
Bob
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Bob
Assuming you're referring to the formal Guidance published with Regulations, such as the DSE or Manual Handling Operations Regs, rather than a summary A5 leaflet, I see the HSE Guidance documents as records of authoritative professional opinion representing scientific knowledge current at the time of publication, comparable in status to research reports, although lacking their degree of detail. While they lack the legal standing of an ACOP, HSE Guidance documents are significantly more than hearsay or 'common sense'.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By peter gotch
Robert
HSE have been trying to clarify this eg in introductory text to eg guidance books eg in HSG224
"Approved Code of Practice
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.
Guidance
This guidance is issued by the Health and Safety Commission. 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."
Where the guidance is of mixed status this is then flagged up eg in HSG224 by the use of different fonts, italics for legislation, bold for ACOP and standard for guidance.
Regards, Peter
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dave Daniel
HSE Guidance Has NO legal status. If the HSE or a claimant's solicitor tried to introduce it into court as evidence it could and should be challenged and would have to be thrown out. ACOP's can of course be introduced and where these are combined with guidance I suppose the judge would have to direct people to avert their eyes from the guidance bits!
In reality both the ACOP's and guidance are so full of gobbledegook and glimpses of the blindingly obvious that I've rarely come across them being used in this way.
I would in passing point out that I do have doubts that on occasions the commentary in the ACOPS may actually be "Ultra Vires" - i.e it strays beyond its legal remit, Since ACOPS are there to interpret a legal requirement, when they introduce other matters beyond what the law requires (and on occasions in my view they do). Although no-one has run this argument yet I think there is scope to challenge the HSC (HSE really) in what they say.
Even ACOPs are under threat. The reversal of the burden of proof they introduce conflicts with the EC Human Rights Directive and I ahve seen a HSE docuemnt proposing they stop writing them.
Dave Daniel
Technical Director
Practical Risk Management
|
|
|
|
|
|
IOSH forums home
»
Our public forums
»
OSH discussion forum
»
Explanation of the Legal Status of HSE Guidance
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.