Robert Weir examines what makes a place of work unsafe
It is now more than 16 years since the Six-Pack Regulations (Usdaw Guide to the 1992 Health and Safety regulations), setting new health and safety duties on employers, came into force. Yet the old health and safety rules still have a role to play as shown by Baker v Quantum Clothing Group and others [2009] EWCA Civ 499, [2009] All ER (D) 205 (May) in which the claimant employee relied upon s 29 of the Factories Act 1961 (FaA 1961) in her claim for noise-induced deafness suffered in the 1970s and 1980s.
The importance of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Baker lies in the approach that Lady Justice Smith took to defining safety under s 29. Whether a place of work is unsafe is a question of fact. That it may have been unforeseeable to the employer that the place was unsafe is irrelevant. The test for safety is strict. By so deciding, Smith LJ was finding that the statutory duty imposed a signally higher duty than the common law, an approach
