Are you aware of employer health and safety responsibilities?

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 enforce a range of legal obligations on an employer.

The main obligations that the employer must fulfil are:
• To protect the health and safety of their employees and those that are affected by their activities, so far as is reasonably practicable
• To assess and review work-related risks faced by its employees and those affected by its activities
• To make and give effect to arrangements for the planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventative and protective measures
• To audit the adequacy of the procedures
• To appoint somebody to implement the measures needed to comply with appropriate laws, and
• To provide its employees with information on the risks they face and the preventative and protective measures to control those risks

An individual director or manager can be held criminally responsible for health and safety offences if the employer is found guilty of an offence and the offence was committed with the knowledge of that director. In addition, an individual can be held to have committed manslaughter when he causes death through gross negligence.