Research project explores public attitudes to health and safety

Safety & Health Practitioner

Historical and legal scholars are undertaking research to understand why public hostility towards ‘health and safety’ has increased dramatically, despite regulation saving thousands of lives.

 

The study, led by the University of Reading in partnership with the University of Portsmouth and funded by IOSH, will examine how the social standing and perceived value of health and safety regulation has changed over the last 50 years.

 

The two-year project will see researchers interview key stakeholders from health and safety practice, including former regulators, politicians and policymakers, workers and trade union safety representatives, employers and managers, and others who have played an active role in health and safety law over the last half-century.

 

The project’s principal investigator, Professor Paul Almond, from the University of Reading’s law school said: “Up until the end of the 1960s, health and safety law consisted of a large number of very prescriptive and complex laws governing different hazards. They were enforced by a multitude of regulators and applied to an industrial and manual workforce, where rates of death, injury and illness were stubbornly high. However, the law has evolved to apply to a largely office-based, service-sector economy.”

 

Professor Almond added: “Rates of injury and death have fallen, and health and safety management is an accepted part of business. But public hostility towards ‘elf and safety’ has increased dramatically, with negative media coverage of these issues coming to the fore.

 

“So why do we seem to think so badly of laws that, on the face of it, have been a success story and what can be done to alter public perception?”

 

The project will see focus groups assess public attitudes towards health and safety regulation, and analysis will examine the changing representation and arguments about it over time.

 

IOSH research and information services manager Jane White, said: “The UK Government is currently focused on ‘reducing the burden of health and safety’, yet countries and policy-makers the world over see the UK legislative framework as the exemplar and have emulated or just plain copied our systems. 

 

“Now we face a juxtaposition between the public perception of red tape and the reality of a legal framework that is fit for purpose.”

 

Research for the project, The changing legitimacy of health and safety regulation, 1960-2013 begins this autumn.