Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

Introduction to Health and Safety at Work
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18.5 
The role of the regulatory 
authorities
18.5.1 The legal framework
The framework for regulating health and safety will vary 
across the world, for example, European countries use 
the EU framework, the Pacifi c Rim countries tend to use 
a USA framework whereas the Caribbean countries fol-
low the United Kingdom framework. The course pro-
vider should be able to describe the legal and regulatory 
framework appertaining to any particular country.
Most legislation is driven by a framework of Acts, 
Regulations and support material including codes of 
practice and standards as illustrated in Figure 18.11. 
Within Europe there is another layer of legislation known 
as Directives, above the Member States own legisla-
tion. These are legally binding on each state, for more 
information see Chapter 1. The USA system of federal 
and individual state legislation is very similar.
18.5.2
Regulatory authorities and safety 
management systems
The role of the national regulatory authority is crucial to 
the successful implementation of an occupational health 
and safety management system. In many parts of the 
world, such as South East Asia, formal adoption of a 
recognized management system is required with third 
party auditing by Government approved auditors. In the 
USA, organizations with approved management sys-
tems may be exempted from normal inspections by the 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In the United Kingdom, there has been a movement 
from prescriptive legislation to risk assessment by the 
employer and this movement is now occurring in many 
parts of the world including the EU. A management 
system is an essential tool to achieve this movement 
and such a system is implied in the UK Management of 
Health and Safety at Work Regulations. Countries such 
as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway have 
developed occupational health and safety management 
systems as an encouragement for such self regula-
tion. The ILO-OSH 2001 system has been adopted by 
Germany, Sweden, Japan, Finland, Korea, China, Mexico, 
Costa Rica, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, 
Thailand, The Czech Republic, Poland and Russia.
It is likely that more countries and multinational 
companies will expect occupational health and safety 
management systems to be adopted either as a legal 
duty or an implied duty following ruling from local courts 
of law.