Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

1.11
The Health and Safety at 
Work Act 1974
1.11.1 Background to the Act
The Health and Safety at Work Act resulted from the 
fi 
ndings of the Robens Report, published in 1972. 
Earlier legislation had tended to relate to specifi c indus-
tries or workplaces. This resulted in over 5 m workers 
Figure 1.5
Health and Safety Law Poster – must be dis-
played or brochure given to employees.
Figure 1.6
Health and Safety at Work Act.
being unprotected by any health and safety legislation. 
Contractors and members of the public were generally 
ignored. The law was more concerned with the require-
ment for plant and equipment to be safe rather than the 
development of parallel arrangements for raising the 
health and safety awareness of employees.
A further serious problem was the diffi culty that 
legislation had in keeping pace with developments 
in technology. For example, following a court ruling 
in 1955 which, in effect, banned the use of grinding 
wheels throughout industry, it took 15 years to produce 
the Abrasive Wheels Regulations 1970 to address 

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Introduction to Health and Safety at Work
10
the problem raised by the 1955 court judgment (John 
Summers and Sons Ltd. v. Frost). In summary, health and 
safety legislation before 1974 tended to be reactive rather 
than proactive.
Lord Robens was asked, in 1970, to review the 
provision made for the health and safety of people at 
work. His report produced conclusions and recommen-
dations upon which the Health and Safety at Work Act 
1974 was based. The principal recommendations were 
as follows:
➤
there should be a single Act that covers all workers 
and that Act should contain general duties which 
should ‘infl uence attitudes’;
➤
the Act should cover all those affected by the 
employer’s undertaking such as contractors, visit-
ors, students and members of the public;
➤
there should be an emphasis on health and safety 
management and the development of safe systems 
of work. This would involve the encouragement of 
employee participation in accident prevention. (This 
was developed many years later into the concept of 
the health and safety culture);
➤
enforcement should be targeted at ‘self-regulation’ 
by the employer rather than reliance on prosecution 
in the courts.
These recommendations led directly to the introduction 
of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act in 1974.