Improving confidence in health and safety is key, says St John Ambulance
December 8th 2009 St John Ambulance has responded to David Cameron's recent views on health and safety by suggesting improved confidence in areas such as first aid could prevent over reaction to regulation. Andrew New, product development manager at St John Ambulance, said:
"First aid is a vital part of health and safety and underlying this whole debate is our attitude towards first aid. In the UK, first aid is often seen as fulfilling a legislative requirement rather than being a valuable skill that saves lives. If more people were trained in first aid this would make a tremendous contribution to reassuring event organisers, businesses and the UK public that help was at hand to deal with everyday accidents – maybe they’d be less inclined to over-react to regulations if they had that confidence.
"As it stands at the moment, there is a great deal of confusion about the regulations and all of us working in health and safety need to do more to make clear how they should be interpreted. Organisations want to do the right thing, but don’t always know how. Somehow common sense gets lost, but Cameron has certainly opened an interesting debate and we look forward to seeing the results of Lord Young’s work in this area."
Check your first aid compliance in light of the HSE’s new first aid guidance.
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