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HSC
Board Meeting, Dec 2005
An important new development took place in December
2005, when the Health and Safety Commission (HSC)
agreed in principle that the law should be changed
to impose duties upon directors. This decision rejected
advice that had been provided to the HSC by its civil
servants within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
The
minutes of this meeting, state that the HSC asked
the HSE to “provide a paper to the commission
in April [2006] on the options, their implications,
what the legislation might look like and timescales.”
It also stated that “there was a need to produce
authoritative guidance which had widespread stakeholder
buy in. Work on this should not start until a decision
on how to amend the legislation is made.”
Subsequent
to this meeting, Bill Callagham, Chair of the HSC,
wrote to the Minister setting out the work that the
HSE would now undertake in relation to advising on
legislative options
HSC
Statement on Directors’ Responsibilities following
HSC meeting
The Health and Safety Commission, at their open meeting
on 6 December, were presented with a paper regarding
directors’ responsibility for health and safety.
The paper followed two stakeholder conferences, one
in Edinburgh and one in London and numerous research
reports from various sources including the Centre
for Corporate Accountability, Greenstreet Berman,
University of Warwick, Middlesex Business School,
University of Salford and the Health and Safety Laboratory.
The Commission have asked the Executive to do further
work, and advise them in the light of it, on possible
changes to health and safety legislation on director
responsibilities. The chair will be writing to the
minister to inform him of the commission conclusions
to date.
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