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  • The Robens Report

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    Ilàyà Thalapathy
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    The Robens Report was commissioned in 1970 by Barbara Castle to review health and safety in UK workplaces. It was chaired by Lord Alfred Robens and made recommendations that were largely enacted in the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. This Act established the broad framework for occupational health and safety in Britain that is still used today. It shifted regulation from prescriptive industry rules to a more flexible goal-setting approach and created the Health and Safety Commission and Executive to enforce these duties. The Act aimed to give workers protection from work-related risks through general duties on employers, employees, and others while allowing for specific regulations in high-risk sectors like construction and mines.

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    The Robens Report was commissioned in 1970 by Barbara Castle to review health and safety in UK workplaces. It was chaired by Lord Alfred Robens and made recommendations that were largely enacted in the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. This Act established the broad framework for occupational health and safety in Britain that is still used today. It shifted regulation from prescriptive industry rules to a more flexible goal-setting approach and created the Health and Safety Commission and Executive to enforce these duties. The Act aimed to give workers protection from work-related risks through general duties on employers, employees, and others while allowing for specific regulations in high-risk sectors like construction and mines.

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    551 views2 pages

    The Robens Report

    Uploaded by

    Ilàyà Thalapathy
    The Robens Report was commissioned in 1970 by Barbara Castle to review health and safety in UK workplaces. It was chaired by Lord Alfred Robens and made recommendations that were largely enacted in the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. This Act established the broad framework for occupational health and safety in Britain that is still used today. It shifted regulation from prescriptive industry rules to a more flexible goal-setting approach and created the Health and Safety Commission and Executive to enforce these duties. The Act aimed to give workers protection from work-related risks through general duties on employers, employees, and others while allowing for specific regulations in high-risk sectors like construction and mines.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    The Robens Report

    The Committee on Health and Safety at Work was appointed in May 1970 by Barbara Castle, Secretary
    of State for Employment and Productivity. It was required to review and make recommendations in
    relation to the safety and health of persons at work and that of the public in connection with activities
    on industrial, commercial or construction sites. The committee was chaired by Lord Alfred Robens,
    Chairman of the National Coal Board and comprised six other members.

    Lord Alfred Robens, Baron Robens of Woldingham, (18 December 1910 – 27 June 1999) was an English
    trade unionist, Labour politician and industrialist. He spent a decade as chair of the National Coal Board
    before heading up the Committee on Health and Safety at Work.

    The Committee reported in June 1972, the recommendations of the committee were substantially
    enacted in the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974, which received Royal Assent on 31 July. The
    following January, the Health and Safety Commission and its enforcing body, the Health and Safety
    Executive were formed.

    The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HSWA)

    The Health and Safety at Work Act is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health and
    safety in Great Britain. The Health and Safety Executive, with local authorities (and other enforcing
    authorities) is responsible for enforcing the Act and a number of other Acts and Statutory Instruments
    relevant to the working environment.

    The Act, which largely reflected the recommendations of the 1972 Robens Report, introduced a broad
    goal setting, non-prescriptive model, based on the view that ‘those that create risk are best placed to
    manage it’. In place of existing detailed and prescriptive industry regulations, it created a flexible system
    whereby regulations express goals and principles, and are supported by codes of practice and guidance.
    Based on consultation and engagement, the new regime was designed to deliver a proportionate,
    targeted and risk-based approach.

    HSE’s first director general described the HSW Act as ‘a bold and far-reaching piece of legislation’. It
    marked both a watershed in health and safety regulation and a recognition that the existing system had
    failed to keep up with the pace of change and was trailing behind industrial and technological
    developments.
    The Act gave people a broad legal right to be protected from work related risks. In general, the law
    imposed a range of duties on employers, the self employed and employees as well as others such as
    designers, manufacturers or suppliers of articles and substances for use at work. These are expressed as
    broad general duties in the Act but are supported in some circumstances by subsidiary regulations such
    as those dealing with the management of health and safety and specific health and safety issues. Many
    of these derive from Directives.

    While most modern health and safety law applies 'across-the-board', there are also additional
    regulations covering particular industry sectors such as construction, agriculture, railways, mines and
    quarries and major hazard and nuclear installations that reflect the particular risk and hazard profile of
    those sectors.

    The Act also established two new bodies - HSC and HSE to implement the framework and the HSE and
    HSC were later merged into one organisation.

    Besides laying down duties, the law also gave the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Local Authority
    inspectors wide ranging powers - to prosecute and to issue notices halting dangerous work or requiring
    improvements.

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