#253 Building The Case For Health & Safety Regulations & Standards

Everyone who goes to work should have the right to go home after work. This is a sentiment that wasn’t necessarily formally recognised until the 1970’s here in the UK.  

Health & Safety often gets mocked for overly cautious or seemingly onerous tasks to meet certain regulations and Standards today, however these are in place for a reason. They save lives, plain and simple.

In this episode, Ian Battersby makes the case for Health & Safety regulations, including why they were introduced, events that sparked the conversation for workplace safety and the impact regulations have had since their introduction.

You’ll learn

• The decline in ISO 45001 adoption
• The Health and Safety at Work Act
• How much difference has this Act made since its introduction?
• How do the US and UK differ in their approach to safety regulations? 
• What events led to the creation of safety regulations in the UK?
• Addressing broader health and safety risks – illness and long-term damage as a result of work
• How to make health & safety manageable

Resources

• HSE
• ISO 45001 Support
• Isologyhub

In this episode, we talk about:

[02:05] Episode Summary – Ian Battersby makes the case for modern Health & Safety regulations, sharing why they were introduced, how they’ve impacted workplace safety statistics and how you can make health & safety more manageable.   

[03:30] The decline in ISO 45001 adoption – From our standpoint as consultants, there has been less adoption of ISO 45001 when compared to other Standard such as ISO 9001 or ISO 27001. In years previous, it was a common Standard to implement either with or straight after ISO 9001. There are a number of reasons for this, including:

• The appetite for ISO 45001 has reduced in favour of newer Standards
• Supply chains not proposing it as a requirement
• Our particular client base feel they are low risk in their respective industries

To be fair, health and safety does get a bad reputation for being overbearing. It’s been subject to many attacks from various media and lobbying groups, however, it’s necessary to ensure we all stay safe at work. Let’s look at some history…

[05:00] The Health & Safety At Work Act: This actreceived Royal Assent in the UK on 31 July 1974, and came into force on 1 April 1975.

To an extent it replaced and improved upon previous laws covering separate industries and activities: Factories, Mines & Quarries, Agriculture, etc

It was enacted in response to a recognition that, although conditions for workers had improved over the century, there was still completely unnecessary harm being caused to many in the country’s workforce.

This is also the point when the Health and Safety Executive was formally established to enforce the law. It also provides a wealth of guidance to businesses, so we highly recommend checking out their website.

They also have the legal duty to collect consolidated data on workplace injuries for the UK, and have provided an annual report since it’s inception in 1975.

[07:45] How much difference has this Act made since its introduction? In the year to 31/03/1975 when consolidated data was first recorded there were 651 deaths at work. The equates to more than 2.5 deaths in a single year per 100,000 workers.

Comparatively, in 2024/25 124 people died in work, and while that’s 124 too many, it’s a big improvement. The rate per 100,000 workers is now 0.37, and you have to bear in mind that the workforce has grown, but overall that’s a reduction of over 85%.

[09:10] How do the US and UK differ in their approach to safety regulations? TheOccupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) serves similar purpose in USA as HSE, but they have important differences in approach and independence.

The HSE is independent of government to an extent and has no ministerial control, whereas OSHA sits within the Dept of Labor.

It can also be argued that the OSHA approach is prescriptive in setting rules whereas HSE follows the more outcome-based principles of HASAWA: to reduce risk “so far as is reasonably practicable”, which some argue is more sophisticated and produces better results.

OSHA has also seen its powers to intervene, investigate and enforce curtailed at times due to certain political interests.  

Looking at the numbers, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published fatality rates for 2024: Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries:

There were 5,070 fatal work injuries recorded in the United States in 2024, down 4.0% from 5,283 in 2023. The fatal work injury rate was 3.3 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2024, a decrease from 3.5 in 2023.

That rate is notably higher than Great Britain’s — 3.3 per 100,000 versus 0.37 — though the two figures aren’t directly comparable. The BLS uses full-time equivalent workers as the denominator and covers a broader range of incident types, while the HSE’s RIDDOR series uses a headcount of all workers and has specific exclusions (road traffic accidents, air and sea travel, etc.). The methodological differences mean a like-for-like comparison requires some care.

[13:35] What events led to the creation of safety regulations in the UK? In thedays of Victorian Britain, it’s difficult to view the common working man, woman AND child as anything other than a commodity.

Thousands died every year in industrial accidents during this era, and large-scale accidents in many industries weren’t uncommon.

Mining was particularly tragic, a few events include:

• The Oaks Colliery explosion of 1866 killed around 360 men and boys.
• Hartley Colliery in 1862 trapped and killed 204 miners when the single shaft collapsed (but individual deaths from falls, gas explosions, and equipment failures happened constantly and attracted no particular attention)
• The Abercarn Colliery explosion in Monmouthshire (1878) killed 268 men.
• The Albion Colliery explosion at Cilfynydd in Wales (1894) killed 290.

These were not exceptional events, they were part of a continuous toll. In the 1860s alone, over 1,000 miners died annually in Britain.

Textile mills, ironworks, shipyards, and construction sites all had very high casualty rates. Factory machinery had no guards. Children routinely worked in spaces too small for adults, climbing inside machinery to clean it while it was still running, or crawling under looms. Mill workers lost fingers, hands, and arms with regularity.

The end of the Victorian era saw attempts at regulation, but without true enforcement. The Factories Act didn’t appear until 1933 and it was bitterly opposed by many owners of mines and mills.

Modern regulations exist today to prevent the tragedies of the past from happening again, they were hard fought for by workers and lobbyists, and in some ways we’re still fighting to include the broader impacts work can have on an individual.

[16:45] Addressing broader health and safety risks – This is in relation toharm accumulated over a lifetime of work with long-term and often fatal consequences. The suffering caused to workers exposed to hazardous conditions is immeasurable.

For example, let’s look at asbestos. The dangers of working with asbestos were recognised remarkably early, as far back as 1890s in France, and Asbestosis was formally recognised in 1930.

This led to regulation in 1931, but only applying to the asbestos textile industry, excluding all the industries where its use was widespread such as construction, shipbuilding, anyone working in insulation etc

Worse still, it wasn’t even enforced!

Then take mesothelioma, the distinctive and almost invariably fatal cancer of the lining of the lungs and abdomen. The connection between asbestos and mesothelioma was established in SA in 1960 when mining blue asbestos.

Further research in the UK firmly established the link in the 60s. From the mid-60s, headlines were being made nationally when shipyard workers from the war era stared dying in large numbers. Unions began lobbying for protections and media coverage continued for years as cases multiplied across several areas and industries.

Nevertheless, its manufacture and use continued.

The Asbestos (Licensing) Regulations 1983 introduced licensing for the most hazardous asbestos removal work. Blue asbestos (crocidolite) was banned in 1985, followed by brown asbestos (amosite) in 1986, though white asbestos (chrysotile) remained legal until 1999.

In the interim and since then thousands of people died and multiple legal cases have ensued.

2218 people died of mesothelioma alone in 2023. Altogether it’s estimated that workplace-related lung disease and cancers kill as many 13000 per year in the UK. Several thousand more are known to die of non-lung-related occupational diseases each year, but these aren’t recorded as workplace deaths on certificates, so these people aren’t included in HSE annual reporting.

It doesn’t stop at deaths either, there is an argument for the detriment that certain work can have on quality of life. Incidents and conditions such as:

• accidents causing amputation and fracture
• eye conditions from welding and other light sources
• Deafness and hearing difficulties
• HAVS, vibration white finger
• Skin conditions from exposure
• Musculoskeletal in low risk environments

None of these are terminal and so often go unreported.  

[23:25] How to make Health & Safety manageable – Some consider modern health and safety regulations to be over the top, but overarching law in the UK has the principle ‘As Far As Is Reasonably Practicable’.

One common area is in risk assessment, The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations states:

“Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of—

(a)      the risks to the health and safety

Where the employer employs five or more employees, they shall record—

• the significant findings of the assessment”

The keyword being ‘significant’ there. If you work in lower risk industries, you aren’t being forced to make unnecessary risk assessments, only when significant risks are present do you need to complete a risk assessment.

For more guidance, check out the HSE guidance on office-based risk assessments.

[25:55] Ian poses a question: Can you seriously say that the drop in deaths and injuries suffered by the common worker would have dropped at the rate it has without regulatory intervention?  Can all employers (or other vested interests) be trusted to do the right thing through good will and voluntary mechanisms alone?

If you’d like any assistance with your ISO 45001 Implementation or need any additional ISO Support, contact us, we’d be happy to help.

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