Urgent Action Required To Save Management Of H&S Regs ACOP

As the HSE continues to weaken health and safety legislation by abolishing ACOPs and withdraw health and safety law guidance from hard copy availability to on-line only; the alarming and catastrophic decision by the HSE to abolish the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations Approved Code of Practice has been highlighted by the TUC.

Newly appointed Assistant Secretary General Secretary, Paul Novak writing in his first ‘Stronger Unions’ website blog about health and safety; has been astonished and angered by the decision to remove the ACOP in favour of ‘guidance’ – no doubt to be available only on-line.

Paul, who started out as a Union organiser and recruiter in Manpower Liverpool and also as a BEC member of the Liverpool Clerical Branch of the CWU begins his blog by writing:

“It seems odd that my first blog since being appointed Assistant General Secretary of the TUC should be on a pretty obscure health and safety issues.”

Clearly when Paul  took up his post as the TUC's new Assistant General Secretary, workplace health and safety was not on his mind, and nor did he realise that it was about to become a major issue for him to tackle.

Indeed, he ends his first blog with a health and safety theme, with a call to arms urging support for IOSH and their defense of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations Approved Code of Practice.

“The professional body for health and safety professionals, IOSH, have started an on-line petition to try to get a parliamentary debate on this matter. I hope that as many of you sign it as possible. It is at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/46262” he writes.

Paul Nowak provides interesting insight into his concerns and the fact he is taking the government’s war against workplace health and safety legislation very seriously.

He writes:

“Given all that is going on in the world with unemployment, cuts, pensions, attacks on trade union rights and the general fall in living standards for everyone who is not a banker or company director, it may seem strange that one small decision has got me hot under the collar, that is the decision to remove an Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) to the Management Regulations. Something I probably would not even have been aware of if a couple of unions had not brought it to my attention.”

He continues:

"Now getting rid of some Code of Practice may not seem a big thing but safety professionals, campaign groups and trade unionists are enraged that, after consulting on whether to withdraw it, the HSE have decided to ignore the views of the large majority of respondents who wanted to keep this ACoP and have instead decided to bin it.

So what is the big deal? Well to some people it is a symptom of all that is wrong with what is happening to health and safety under this Government. The Management Regulations underpin the principle of risk assessment – one of the pillars of our health and safety system."

Making the argument that there is no reason to abolish the ACOP, he writes:

"The regulations themselves are short, simple and clear but to help employers implement them there is an ACoP which outlines what they will have to do to meet their legal requirement in more detail. The ACoP has been around almost as long as the regulations themselves and certainly needed updating but it covered a lot of things that are not covered elsewhere (including involving safety reps in risk assessments).

The HSE argue that everything in the ACoP is covered in guidance. That misses the point. An ACoP has different status from guidance and as any safety rep could have told them, employers are far more likely to do something because it is in an ACoP. That is not to say that guidance is not useful. The new HSG65 which is due to be published shortly is a great document but it is not an ACoP. Replacing an ACoP with guidance is simply downgrading it and giving it 'nice to have' status. We have also seen other ACoPs be withdrawn and there seems a reluctance to bring in new ones.

I am not sure why the HSE has a problem with ACoPs. Employers organisations have said they like them, the Loftsedt Report seemed to generally support them, and H&S professionals say they find them invaluable. The only people with a problem with them seem to be the HSE.

And there lies the problem. I think people are annoyed at the decision to get rid of the Management Regulations ACoP because they simply can see no logic to the decision. No attempt seems to have been made to update it, and no convincing reason has been given for ditching it. It just seems to be a case of “we have been told to get rid of as much regulation as we can and this is one of the low hanging ones we can pick off easily”.

Unionsafety will continue to highlight the loss of ACOPs and the destruction of health and safety legislation, ACOPS and guidance, as the HSE and the Government remove all ACOPs which practically have status in law, in order to give employers further reason to ignore health and safety legislation with impunity.

It's a two edged sword - remove as much health and safety protection from workers as possible whist outlawing pro-active HSE and local authority inspections!

More injuries at work, more deaths at work; and minimum risk of killer employers getting caught!

The defense of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations Approved Code of Practice is of paramount importance, and MUST begin now! As the TUC's Assistant General Secretary Paul Novak says:

“The professional body for health and safety professionals, IOSH, have started an on-line petition to try to get a parliamentary debate on this matter. I hope that as many of you sign it as possible."

Sign the e-petition here

Source: TUC / Stronger Unions website / Unionsafety

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