Manufacturers have given a firm thumbs-down to proposed European rules requiring that stress and other psychosocial risks be considered as part of risk assessments for musculoskeletal disorders.

A survey of 200 companies, carried out by EEF – the manufacturers’ organisation, has revealed considerable distaste among respondents for more health and safety legislation, but a strong appetite for case-study guidance to control risk.

Respondents were asked about two EU legislation proposals – one relating to MSDs and the other to ionising radiations.

While various individual instruments, including the Manual Handling Directive and the Display Screen Equipment Directive, currently cover the prevention of MSDs, the planned Musculoskeletal Disorders Directive attempts to simplify the law in this area by addressing all significant ergonomic risk factors at work in a single directive. It also proposes that psychosocial factors, such as stress and work pressure, be considered in risk assessments.

Just over a quarter (27 per cent) of respondents to the EEF survey said they already include psychosocial factors in their risk assessments. Asked if this should be made a legal requirement, however, nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) disagreed.

In the UK, companies have a general legal duty to protect workers’ health, and the HSE expects organisations to consider work-related stress, or ‘wellness’ as part of a suitable and sufficient risk-assessment process. But stress is a difficult area to enforce for the HSE, owing largely to the subjective nature of stress assessments and the difficulty in proving that the problem is caused by work-related factors.

The European Commission is also proposing to ‘simplify’ five directives on the health and safety, environmental and medical aspects of ionising radiations into one new directive. A quarter of businesses that responded to the survey work with ionising radiations and of this proportion, 95 per cent believed that the current law should be neither tightened, nor relaxed.

When asked what would help improve control of their key risks, three-quarters of respondents voted for case-study guidance, while nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) opted for non-binding guidance. New legislation was seen as a driver for improvements in the control of risks by less than 10 per cent of respondents, with almost half (49 per cent) disagreeing that it would improve control.

Commenting on the survey findings, Steve Pointer, the EEF’s head of health and safety, praised the HSE’s pragmatic approach to EU legislation but urged the UK Government to work harder to reduce the burden of legislation coming out of Europe.

Writing in his blog on 7 January, he said: “I believe that the European Parliament and Commission need to direct their attention to ensuring that the original structure [of health and safety legislation] is effective in practice. That means that implementation, including enforcement of existing requirements, needs to be effective and consistent across all member states. Enforcement activity should be risk-based, directing activity to higher-risk sectors and those who are not managing risks, and thus putting workers at serious risk.”

To coincide with the survey results, the EEF has also published new case-study guidance on MSDs, which can be accessed at www.eef.org.uk/msd

Hinting that other stakeholders could produce more guidance to help organisations manage their health and safety duties, Pointer remarked: “There also needs to be much better promotion of, and practical support for, duty-holders. That is not just down to the European Commission, or even member governments – employers’ groups, trade unions and others have a key role to play.”