New h&s guidance for bosses

The Health & Safety Commission has published new guidance recommending that company directors must ensure risks to health and safety are properly managed. Among the guidance to company directors are recommendations such as nominating a director to oversee health and safety issues, ensuring that all decisions reflect the intentions in the organisation's health and safety policy and keeping up-to-date with relevant risk management issues. HSC chairman Bill Callaghan said, 'We will be monitoring very closely the impact this guidance has on improving corporate responsibility for ensuring control of health and safety risks. Those that cannot manage health and safety cannot manage.' According to provisional HSC statistics for 2000-2001, there is a 34% increase in fatalities among UK workers with 295 deaths compared to 220 in 1999-2000. However, over the same period the number of reported non-fatal major injuries fell by 4.7% from 29,315 to 27,935.