This Act is the main piece of legislation covering health and safety at work. The aim of the Act is to secure the health, safety and welfare of those at work, to protect members of the public from activities arising out of the work of others, and to control the use of dangerous substances.
The Act imposes general duties on employers to their employees. The most basic duty of an employer is to ensure that his employee’s health, safety and welfare at work are protected. The employer must provide the employee with systems of work that are safe, he must make arrangements to ensure that articles and substances are safely handled and stored, he must provide information, training and supervision to ensure that his employees are safe, and he must provide a safe working environment.
For practical purposes, this means that your employer should do things such as provide you with the equipment you need to safely do your job; he must make sure that you are not put at unnecessary risk by having to carry articles without proper support; and he must make sure that he trains and supervises you so that you can do your job properly.
As well as owing duties to their own employees, employers and those who are self-employed owe a duty under section 3 of the Act to those who are not employed by them. They must ensure that they do not expose these people to unnecessary risks to their health and safety. If a construction company is erecting scaffolding on a public road, it has to ensure that not only its own employees but also members of the public are not put at risk as a result of this work. If the company does not make sure that the scaffolding is properly secured and a pole then falls onto the head of a member of the public passing by, the company may well be liable under the Act to the injured party.
Employees themselves have duties under the Act. Under section 7, they have to take reasonable care of themselves and those likely to be affected by their work, and they have to co-operate with requirements imposed upon them by the employer. If a lumberjack is careless with his chainsaw and accidentally hacks off his own hand, it is likely that he will be held in breach of his duty under the Act, although he may also argue that he was not properly trained to use a chainsaw, in which case the employer may be in breach as well.