When establishing a health and safety protocol for your business, guided by educational courses on the types of risks and concerns that must be addressed and assessed, one concept that is intuitively understood but not always clearly defined is the concept of reasonable practicability.
From the Health and Safety At Work Act 1974 onwards, employers have had a general duty to make sure that all employees have welfare, safety and health protected as much as is reasonably practicable.
This concept, often described as keeping risks “as low as reasonably practicable” (ALARP) is a term that is intuitively understood, but also one that is somewhat nebulously defined by design and lacks a detailed universal definition.
It is defined, as most aspects of safety under The 1974 Act are, on a risk-by-risk basis, with risk being defined by the chance of a hazardous event and the potential consequences.
Reducing risk means reducing the likelihood of said hazard occurring, lessening the potential consequences or a combination of the two, depending on the specific industry.
How Low Is Low Enough?
The concept of ALARP is the understanding that not every job can be made completely risk-free. Every single action every human takes comes with a degree of risk of consequences after all, and some hazards are simply unavoidable without fundamental societal shifts.
Making a risk ALARP typically means that safety measures are in place to lower the risk as much as possible without putting a greatly disproportionate amount of time, effort and financial cost into reducing the risk further.
In some regards, it is a form of cost-benefit analysis, although exceptional care must be taken in assigning a discrete financial value to concepts that can often be seen as priceless such as a human life or the environment.
The 1974 Act, the Health and Safety Executive, and UK case law use the precedent set by Edwards v National Coal Board, a 1949 Court of Appeal case centred around whether it was a reasonable request to reinforce every supporting structure in every roadway of every mine in the United Kingdom.
This created the reasonably practical test where people with a duty of care should do everything they can to mitigate risk unless it can be demonstrated that there is a “gross disproportion” between the level of risk (in terms of both chance and consequence) and the “sacrifice involved” in averting said risk.
The general consensus is that this is less a cost-benefit analysis and more that businesses should choose to undertake additional safety measures unless it can be proved otherwise that the mitigation measures would provide a substantially smaller benefit than the costs involved.
The rule of thumb in this regard, coming from the Sizewell B Inquiry into constructing a nuclear power station is that a starting point for considerations into ALARP begins with any measures that cost three times as much as the benefits are demonstrated to be worth.
This can vary somewhat depending on the risk to the public, with low risks only requiring a cost twice as much as the benefits whilst high risks require a cost ten times as much.
It is not a perfect definition, given that the risk assessments and analysis involved putting a financial value on a human life, something that became a controversial subject in the wake of the Ford Pinto memo.
However, it does provide the foundations for a nuanced risk assessment, and a rule of thumb about the levels of risk to safety that are tolerable.
If you’d like to build your health and safety knowledge further, our NEBOSH General Certificate course is a great place to start. It’s designed for anyone looking to develop practical skills and gain a respected qualification in workplace safety. To find out more, get in touch with the ACT team today.
