Why Bother with Health and Safety?

There are three main reasons why businesses should be concerned with health and safety:

Legal – health and safety requirements in the workplace are part of Criminal Law. Failure to follow these straightforward requirements is punishable by prosecution, fines for the company and managers, and also prison sentences for serious accidents.

Financial – accidents, ill health and other incidents all cost money. Direct costs such as sick pay and repairs to damaged equipment are obvious. Less obvious are the costs associated with managers’ time sorting out the aftermath of an accident. The Health and Safety Executive estimate that a simple lost time accident will cost a company over £2000 in uninsured costs.

More serious accidents will cost anything from £45,000 in fines up to an unlimited amount in a Crown Court. The HSE estimates that other costs to the business will be up to 10 times the amount of any fine. Where a business has injured any person, they will be – quite rightly – be liable to be sued. This leads to increases in insurance premiums for the company.

Moral – everyone wants to go home at the end of the day safe and healthy. It is such an obvious point that it is barely worth mentioning. But without the efforts of managers and workers, every day, in all workplaces, accidents would be much more common.

The UK has the LOWEST accident rates in the whole of Europe – a record for which we should be rightly proud. Workplace fatalities have fallen 73% since 1974 when the Health and Safety at Work Act was introduced.

Health and Safety is EVERYONE’S responsibility, and Balshaw Safety can help everyone in your business understand the part they can play to keep themselves and everyone else safe – so we can enjoy the rest of our lives!