Article from Play for Wales
Winter 2007
(Issue 23)
One day Wales will be a place
where we recognise and
provide for every child’s play
needs
safety, health and play, time to re-think?
Professor David Ball of the Centre for
Decision Analysis and Risk Management,
School of Health and Social Science,
Middlesex University calls for a rethink on
current legislation.
How likely is it that the originators of the 1974
Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) intended
this legislation to apply, not just to the workplace,
but to the management of things like children’s
play experiences, school grounds, public parks,
city squares, woodlands, and sport and leisure
activities? The answer is, in all probability, that it
never crossed their minds. Yet the United Kingdom
now finds itself with legislation covering children’s
play that was designed to protect workers in
factories and offices.
The Act itself has much to commend it so far
as the management of occupational health and
safety is concerned – it is a piece of legislation
of which to be proud. This is because of its
underlying philosophy. If you look at the HSWA
poster hanging on the wall in your workplace, you
will notice that the words “so far as is reasonably
practicable” appear repeatedly, and this is where
the philosophy lies. What this implies is that a
kind of cost-benefit test be applied to proposed
safety measures to see if they are reasonable and
worth implementing. For instance, if a proposed
safety measure is very costly and is expected
to produce little gain in terms of safety, it would
not be required by the Act. On the other hand,
measures that produce a favourable benefit to cost
ratio must, according to the Act, be applied. This
philosophy, seeks to generate the greatest good
for the greatest number from a pot of resources of
finite size. The contribution of this philosophy to
decision making in Britain is immense, and its use
can be observed in all sectors from the National
Health Service to the Maritime and Coastguard
Agency. Its proper application helps ensure that
the nation gets the most out of its resources.
However, Section 3 of the HSWA says that the Act
should apply not just to workers, but to visitors to
workplaces, and as time has passed this has come
to be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as including
visitors to public parks, forests, and even play
spaces, since these can, with a little imagination,
be said to be ‘somebody’s workplace.’ Thus, the
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) now sees itself
as the regulator regarding the management of
safety in these settings.
This trend, to apply the HSWA to public
places including play spaces, has had many
consequences. These include the requirement
for the risk assessment of almost everything,
paperwork to demonstrate it has been done, and
the spread of factory-style assessment methods
and solutions into the public sector.
This can be a burden. For example, some
educational establishments, as remarked by
Professor John Adams of University College
London, have produced a 50 page risk assessment
pro formas for student trips. Of course, the HSE
has responded on its website that sensible risk
management does not require the generation of
mountains of useless paperwork, but should an
accident occur on your patch the fact is that a
mountain is more likely to help you than a molehill.
We appear to be locked into a rather foolish
situation as a result of unintended consequences
of the HSWA.
There are, in addition, other more pressing issues
to be concerned about. Readers have likely
experienced themselves, and will be aware of
numerous cases reported by the media, of the
banning of many previously-enjoyed activities.
Included within these are things like tree climbing,
den building, cookery and woodwork classes in
schools, playing football at break time, and so the
list goes on. Something seriously bad is going on
when children and young people lose out on their
opportunities to play, socialise, explore, or just be
themselves, yet many observers agree that such
a process has been operating for twenty years or
more.
Further attention was brought to the matter when
earlier this year UNICEF reported that British
children have the worst childhood in Europe, and
although this has recently been challenged, there
is something in it. Many other agencies, including
the Children’s Society, the Children’s Play Council,
the Better Regulation Commission and the Health
and Safety Commission, have raised similar
concerns. They cannot all be wrong.
This raises another problem which can be linked
with the encroachment of industrial-style risk
assessment into the public sphere including play.
The aim of these assessments is, as the HSE
has put it, simply to drive down risk. This may
well be right in a factory setting, but in public life
there should be another crucial aspect to any
decision which impinges on the conduct of an
activity or an experience, namely, their benefits.
Play experiences have many benefits (including
health). Playing in forests, for instance provides
huge benefits, as does playing in most natural
environments and many public places; to apply risk
assessment methodologies to such places without
explicit and due consideration of these benefits
will wreak havoc upon our environment and life
experiences. Yet the standard pro formas and
risk assessment methodologies seldom, if ever,
mention the word ‘benefit,’ and even if they do, it is
unclear how they have been incorporated into the
final decision as to what to do.
A failure to consider benefits, or a downgrading of
their importance by being less than explicit about
them, will inevitably lead to a situation in which
many play experiences will simply be swept away
by the quest for safety from injury. The only thing
that prevents this happening is perhaps some
vestige of common sense which lingers in the
back of the risk assessor’s mind. This, however, is
a shallow and flimsy foothold upon which to rely.
Experiences with court cases, in which experts
present evidence, have shown all too clearly
that many experts in injury cases are anything
but experts in matters important to children’s
development, health or welfare. Such things are,
apparently, outside of their experience, at least
while acting in their professional capacity. The
HSE itself, would hardly claim to be an expert on
children’s upbringing, play experiences, education,
or the magic of an unsupervised walk in the forest,
much as they might try.
The consequences of this are many and profound,
as noted by UNICEF and all the other agencies
above, and also, for instance, by personal injury
barrister Jerome Mayhew when he speculated as
follows:
“Teenagers have been displaced from the
managed environment of the playground to the
wholly-unmanaged environment of the street,
the railway, or the shopping mal … is the rise
in teenage antisocial behaviour a bizarre side
effect of the health and safety standardisation
process?”
(Safety and Health Practitioner, December 2007)
Such connections are of course hard to prove,
but nor can or should they be casually dismissed.
We should be far more watchful and critical of the
impact of legislation and standards upon our lives,
lest we inadvertently destroy those things we most
value.
Find out more at
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/risk/index.htm
Play Wales says:
We are calling for the creation of new legislation
that will mean a positive outcome for children and
their play, and consequently their resilience and
robustness.
The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) was
not originally intended to cover chlldren’s play
and is not fit for purpose. There are those who
would argue that the Act is adequate – it is simply
a matter of the way in which it is interpreted.
However, it is clear that the Act is open to a
variety of interpretations where children’s play
is concerned – and that some of them are
detrimental to children’s healthy development.
These interpretations lead people to assume that
they must take measures that stamp out simple
pleasures. Legislation must be created so that
when judging activities and environments for
children the likelihood of harm is judged against
the likelihood of benefit to the child.
We are not saying that we want children to be
harmed – we simply call for the application of a
common sense approach that supports children’s
play and those providing for it.
We have already begun a campaign and have
started to lobby decision makers. If you would like
to add your name to a list of supporters please
email [email protected]
For more information please contact:
Play Wales, Baltic House, Mount Stuart
Square, Cardiff CF10 5FH
[email protected]
www.playwales.org.uk
Registered Charity No. 1068926. A company limited by guarantee
registered in Wales No. 3507258