Health and Safety is the responsibility of everyone. We know that. However, there are grey areas where people cannot determine whose direct responsibility it is to provide the safety equipment or processes required.

An example of this is building access. Where an employee is required to access an area of a building it is very clear that the employer is required to provide safe means of access for their worker.

This will be a series of risk assessed methods of work, with hopefully the correct equipment provided, whether this be passive safety, single anchorages, ladder systems or horizontal lifelines.

However, it is a common practice for building owners to incorrectly pass the responsibility for this risk assessment and method statement generation onto a subcontractor employed to perform a task on the building. Many a time have we seen the statement “Contractor to supply detailed RAMS” within contracts, thereby passing responsibility for themselves and their employees’ safety.

This “buck-passing” does not stop just at building access.