In UK health and safety there are recommended guidelines and official law, it is an employer’s responsibility to understand the difference and try to follow advisory practices from the government and HSE.  Sometimes laws can be written which you would never believe to be true or vice versa you may be unaware of specific rules which are legal requirements in your workplace. To help educate staff and employers, or simply to refresh your memory if you are aware of safety law, here is a true or false quiz to test your knowledge. Take a look below and see how many you can guess correctly before reading the official rules:

A metal processing company has been fined £12,000 after an employee sustained life changing injuries at an incident at a premises in the Oldbury in the West Midlands.  Independent Slitters Limited carries out metal slitting at the facility – a process that involves coils of metal being split into various lengths. On 3 May 2022, 53-year-old Peter Daniels, husband and father of one, had a finger severed and a de-gloving of his right hand.

An engineering and services company has been fined following the death of a worker.  Alistair Hutton,  a sub-contractor hired by NG Bailey Limited, lost his life while working on the construction of the Baird Family Hospital in Aberdeen on 18 January 2023.

A company in Hertfordshire has been fined after an employee was crushed to death.  James Rourke lost his life after being struck and run over by an excavator at Sarazen Gardens, Brampton on 18 November 2019.

Health and safety is the risk of most concern to directors and officers in 2024, a survey conducted by WTW and Clyde and Co has revealed. 

A company has been fined for health and safety failings that led to a driver suffering a traumatic brain injury.  Timothy Bates was delivering fuel for a temporary diesel generator at Haldane Fisher’s timber processing site in Walsall when he fell from a trailer on July 28, 2022.

A construction company in Kent has been fined after a sub-contractor fell and died from his injuries.  Mark Tolley, 51, fell nearly two metres through an opening in a scaffold on 5 July 2017 while working on the construction of six houses on Smarden Road in Headcorn, Kent.

One of the nation’s largest producers of supermarket pizzas has been fined £800,000 after two workers suffered serious injuries at its factory in Bolton.  Stateside Foods Limited produces millions of pizzas each year, supplied to major UK supermarkets. The company was hit with the fine after the employees were caught up in machinery at the Westhoughton site in two separate incidents during 2020.

Two Herefordshire joinery firms have been rapped over safety failings.  The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) served an immediate prohibition notice on RJ Joinery & Equestrian Services of Glanwye Business Park over the English border from Hay-on-Wye, over use of a circular table saw.

THE LANDLORDS of a pub will return to court next month after admitting breaching health and safety regulations relating to the death of a woman.  Olwen Collier suffered serious head injuries after falling down the cellar of the Stag and Pheasant in Carmel on January 12 last year. She was airlifted to the University Hospital of Wales, but died from her injuries four days later.