1.2 Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HASAWA) & Statutory Duties

Introduction to HASAWA 1974

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HASAWA) forms the bedrock of health and safety law in Great Britain. Enacted following the landmark 1972 Robens Report, HASAWA shifted the UK regulatory approach from prescriptive, trade-specific statutes to a goal-setting, risk-based framework. HASAWA is defined as an "enabling Act"—a primary piece of legislation that sets out broad statutory duties while empowering the Secretary of State to create specific, detailed secondary legislation known as Statutory Instruments (Regulations) such as the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015), the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH), and the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR).

HASAWA applies across all employment sectors, including construction sites, civil engineering projects, and refurbishments. Breach of statutory duties under HASAWA is a criminal offence, tried in either the Magistrates' Court or the Crown Court, carrying penalties of unlimited fines and up to two years imprisonment for culpable individuals.

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Core Statutory Duties under HASAWA 1974

HASAWA establishes clear duties across several key sections, creating a comprehensive legal umbrella across construction project environments.

Section 2: Duties of Employers to Employees

Under Section 2(1), every employer has a legal duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare at work of all their employees.

To operationalize this general duty, Section 2(2) details five specific sub-duties that site managers must implement:

1. Safe Plant and Systems of Work: Provision and maintenance of plant, machinery, equipment, and systems of work that are safe and without risks to health (e.g., inspected excavators, guarded saws, safe timbering procedures).
2. Safe Use, Handling, Storage, and Transport: Arrangements for ensuring safety and absence of risks to health in connection with the use, handling, storage, and transport of articles and substances (e.g., COSHH materials, LPG cylinders, fuel tanks, structural steel).
3. Information, Instruction, Training, and Supervision: Provision of such information, instruction, training, and supervision as is necessary to ensure the health and safety at work of employees (e.g., site inductions, SMSTS/SSSTS cards, CPCS plant tickets, site tooltalks).
4. Safe Access and Egress: Maintenance of any place of work under the employer's control in a condition that is safe and without risks to health, including safe means of access to and egress from it (e.g., clear scaffold walkways, subterranean trench ladders, segregated pedestrian routes).
5. Safe Working Environment & Welfare: Provision and maintenance of a working environment for employees that is safe, without risks to health, and adequate as regards facilities and arrangements for their welfare at work (e.g., clean toilets, drying rooms, potable drinking water, rest areas).

Section 2(3): Written Health and Safety Policy

Any employer employing 5 or more employees must prepare, and as often as appropriate revise, a written Health and Safety Policy. The policy must set out:

• Statement of Intent: The organization's overall commitment to health and safety.
• Organization: Roles, responsibilities, and chain of command for safety management.
• Arrangements: Practical systems, procedures, risk assessments, and emergency plans.

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Section 3: Duties to Non-Employees

Section 3(1) requires employers, and Section 3(2) requires self-employed persons, to conduct their undertakings in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in their employment who may be affected thereby (such as sub-contractors, site visitors, delivery drivers, neighboring residents, and members of the public) are not exposed to risks to their health or safety.

In construction site management, Section 3 is critical when managing site perimeters, overhead crane lifting radius over public footpaths, dust/noise migration, and traffic management around school zones.

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Section 4: Duties of Persons in Control of Premises

Section 4 places duties on anyone who has, to any extent, control of non-domestic premises (such as principal contractors, site owners, or managing agents). Controllers of premises must ensure that the premises, access routes, and plant provided for use are safe and without risks to health for individuals working there who are not their direct employees.

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Section 6: Duties of Manufacturers, Designers, and Suppliers

Section 6 creates statutory duties for any person who designs, manufactures, imports, or supplies any article or substance for use at work. They must ensure that articles and substances are designed and constructed to be safe, tested, and accompanied by adequate information, safety data sheets, and operating manuals.

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Section 7: Statutory Duties of Employees

While employers hold overall statutory responsibility, employees carry explicit legal obligations under Section 7 while at work:

1. Take Reasonable Care: To take reasonable care for the health and safety of themselves and of other persons who may be affected by their acts or omissions at work.
2. Cooperate with Employer: To cooperate with their employer or any other person so far as is necessary to enable statutory health and safety duties or requirements to be performed or complied with.

Failure of an operative to wear mandatory fall protection harness equipment or bypassing safety interlocks can lead directly to criminal prosecution of the employee under Section 7.

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Section 8: Duty Not to Interfere or Misuse

Section 8 establishes an absolute duty applying to all persons (whether employees, visitors, or members of the public). No person shall intentionally or recklessly interfere with or misuse anything provided in the interests of health, safety, or welfare under statutory requirements (e.g., removing scaffolding guardrails, disabling excavator seatbelt interlocks, or discharging fire extinguishers unlawfully).

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Section 37: Personal Liability of Directors and Managers

Under Section 37, if a health and safety offence committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary, or other similar officer of the body corporate, that individual—as well as the company—is guilty of the offence and liable to prosecution. In construction, site managers and project directors can face personal criminal records, disqualification, and custodial sentences.

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Key Statutory Legal Duties Matrix

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The Legal Qualifier: "So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable" (SFARP)

Most duties under HASAWA are qualified by the phrase "so far as is reasonably practicable" (SFARP). This concept was defined in the landmark legal case Edwards v. National Coal Board (1949).

SFARP requires a quantitative and qualitative assessment in which the quantum of risk is weighed against the sacrifice involved in taking measures to avert the risk (in terms of money, time, and trouble):

• If the risk is significant, substantial resources must be expended to eliminate or control it.
• If there is a gross disproportion between the risk and the sacrifice—meaning the risk is insignificant while the cost/effort is astronomical—the duty holder is not legally required to execute that measure.
• The legal onus of proof rests on the defendant (employer/manager) to prove that it was not reasonably practicable to do more than was done.

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The Legal Hierarchy: Acts, Regulations, ACOPs and Guidance

CITB expects site managers to describe not just HASAWA itself but the purpose of health, safety and environment legislation and the different legislative requirements that must be followed. UK health and safety law operates in four tiers, and they carry very different legal weight. Confusing them is how managers end up either ignoring a binding requirement or gold-plating advisory guidance at the expense of the real risks.

Three distinctions that decide exam answers

1. Criminal versus civil. A prosecution under HASAWA is a criminal matter brought by the regulator, punishable by fine and imprisonment, and it is about punishing the breach. A personal injury claim is a civil matter brought by the injured person, decided on the balance of probabilities, and it is about compensating loss. The same incident routinely produces both, and an HSE conviction makes the civil claim very difficult to defend.
2. Absolute versus qualified duties. Where a regulation says something "shall" be done, the duty is absolute — cost, difficulty and inconvenience are irrelevant. Where it says "so far as is reasonably practicable", you may balance the degree of risk against the time, trouble and cost of averting it, but the burden of proving that balance falls on the duty holder. A duty qualified by "so far as is practicable" sits between the two: it means whatever is technically possible in light of current knowledge, regardless of cost.
3. Health and safety versus environmental law. The SMSTS syllabus deliberately says "health, safety and environment". Environmental duties run on a parallel statutory track — principally the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (including the waste duty of care), the Environmental Permitting Regulations and the Control of Pollution Act 1974 — and are enforced on site by the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales or SEPA rather than by the HSE. Those duties are covered in Section 6.5, but the point to hold now is that a site manager answers to two separate regulators with separate powers, and compliance with one is no defence to the other.