Safety Culture

Of late various organisations, like Scouts, schools or local councils, have been stopping various activities due to ‘health and safety’. The more ridiculous examples of this has been schools stopping kids playing conkers in the playground to the stopping of the centuries old tradition of cheese rolling.

The reasons for this rise in the ‘health and safety’ culture is twofold – stupidity and money!

A lot of the problems come from people’s stupidity. So for example, they will try to go walking in the wilder upland areas of, say The Lake District, Snowdonia or Ben Nevis, for example, without proper route planning or being properly equipped for the conditions. They then have a problem or the weather suddenly changes for the worse and they are stuck. So they have to call out the Mountain Rescue service, which like the RNLI on the sea, is run by volunteers, to sort them out.

The money part comes from the culture that has grown up that if there is an accident that someone is to ‘blame’ and they must pay a financial penalty. Here it is the problem of the ‘no win no fee’ injury ambulance chasers, sorry, lawyers and their ‘if there is blame, there is a claim’ slogans.

All this has ended up that youth organisations and schools are reluctant to run activities or trips in case something goes wrong and they get sued to bits.

As a Scout on a camp, I cut my hand with a bow saw and needed some stiches. My parents were very understanding and after ensuring I was ok asked if I was going back to camp! I did. However, if it were now and not 1984, they could have turned to my Scout Leader and told him that he and / or the Group were going to be sued for compensation. Of course if that were that case, they wouldn’t have got too far as it was my own fault as I hadn’t secured the wood properly as I was told!

Now of course at this point I need to say I am all in favour in doing things correctly and safely and that with any risky activities all possible precautions are taken. But that is the point, that although risks are taken, the potential problems have been though about (so you have a safety rope when rock climbing then?) and measures are in place to prevent them or people know what to do if something goes wrong.

With all this in mind, it’s interesting to read that the Government have commissioned a report into this and it’s about to be published (it could be an interesting read!). The idea being to cut down on the ‘no win no fee’ litigation and remove some of the unnecessary legislation.

Hopefully, when published, it will be acted upon and the fear of kids being injured while playing conkers in the playground (I never remember getting an injury while playing conkers, other than a sore knuckle from being hit by a conker!) and the school being sued can be removed.

6 Replies to “Safety Culture”

  1. It is really ridiculous, isn’t it! Another very important factor is the greedy insuarance companies, that continuosly up the premiums, and stall and complicate cases that make it easier to sue for compensation than get your insurance paid out to you!
    I had a discussion about this with a British friend a couple of weeks back and was baffled! Elderly friends of mine can’t go abroad to visit relatives because their insurance companies won’t give them travel insurance, young people who can’t go canoeing on twinning trips due to that insurance won’t cover, exchange trips that can’t happen, because as EVERY adult involved in both countries need to have their records checked, which makes it so expensive that the kids might as well stay in a hotel (and reeeaaaallly, a police check only tells you if someone has been sentenced, not that they have dirty thoughts!), most needed charity work has gone from hands on to fundraising for the same reason, and FUNDRAISERS for child welfare charities STILL have to have police checks even though they never get close to children!
    And by trying to make sure that people don’t ever get subjected to potentially dangerous things we make them completely unaware of the dangers: If you have stiches from cutting your hand with a saw, you learn how to secure the wood properly, if you get lost once or twice, learn how to prepare and pack, and to avoid to get lost in the first place, if you get to try adventurous activities in a well organised context, you learn to evaluate danger and avoid taking risks… It IS as simple as that!!!!
    It is so sad that you almost have to have parents to sign a disclaimer before doing regular scouting acitivities, but then of course the insurance won’t cover any mishap.
    My friend blamed the EU, and nothing could convince her that it is accually a lot less complicated: Greed, the simplest and most devestating human instinct. FIGHT IT!

  2. Nick

    great post – a funny fact the Cheese Rolling was not cancelled due to the safety of the idiots who chase the cheese down a 1 in 2 slope (it is 1 in 1 in places) it was cancelled because there were to many people coming to see the event and as such getting crushed due people pushing and shoving to see the event.

    You don’t mention Risk Assessment, the reason you have a safety rope when climbing is you do a risk assessment (I ain’t bloody climbing that without something tied on to me) – The Scout Association is very good as getting people in the thought process of Risk Assessment and people do it, normally with out thinking, (better put some glow sticks on those tent pegs you know what skip is like he will fall over them) the way to avoid the blame culture is to take the next step and write it down.
    People cringe when you say complete a risk assessment however it does not need to be a huge document 10 pages long, it can be a simple line.
    Chopping wood – saws & axes – mark out chopping areas – first aid kit present gloves where appropriate.

    YIS
    K

  3. Lotta,

    Yep I agree, greed is the major problem.
    I know what you mean about the insurance companies and travel insurance. It takes my Mum over an hour to sort out insurance for her and Dad to go abroad. The do manage to get it sorted though!
    You are right about the making a mistake and learning how to do things properly. I am very careful about how I use the bow saw, even now and it makes quite a good teaching story, especially when I show the Scouts my scar!

  4. Chris,

    Oh yeah I’d forgotten about risk assessments (shouldn’t really admit to that should I?).
    I admit I was not looking forward to doing ours when I realised they had to be done, but they aren’t very onerous and of course aren’t a one time only document. Of course we do a lot of things without thinking about them (glow sticks on the tent pegs), so to write it all down is a good thing as I think there is a tendency to assume that everyone knows that is what we always do.

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