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Employers must keep lone workers under review or risk breaching health and safety laws

08 February 2010

Employers have a legal duty of care to do everything reasonably practicable to ensure the health and safety of their employees.

This involves keeping risks under review and if necessary reacting to changing circumstances.

Those who work alone and visit clients in their own homes, for example in the health and social care sectors, can be particularly vulnerable, as a recent tragic case demonstrates. If an employer fails in its  health and safety duty it could be subject to a substantial fine.

A mental health charity has just been fined £30,000 and ordered to pay £20,000 costs after one of its young support workers was stabbed to death by a service user she was visiting on the final day of her six month probation period.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that the charity failed to respond to a number of warning signs which indicated that the service user’s mental health was deteriorating, and that it failed to offer its employee the level of protection the job warranted.

Employers can protect their employees – and themselves against liability – if they carry out a risk assessment and, importantly, implement measures to reduce any risks identified.

The Health and Safety Executive has lots of guidance for employers on its website and has produced a guidance booklet on the risks of working alone. http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg73.pdf

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