Health and safety legislation

The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 encourages a proactive approach to keeping people safe from harm.

The key emphasis is that everyone in the workplace is responsible for health and safety. A failure to put appropriate systems in place to identify potential harm and work collaboratively to keep people safe may lead to prosecution and penalties.

Duties of officers

Elected board members and the principal must take reasonable steps to:

know about current work health and safety matters
understand the hazards or risks associated with the workplace operations
make sure there are resources and processes for managing risks
ensure there are processes for receiving and reviewing information on and responding to incidents, hazards and risks
ensure workplace health and safety processes and resources are being used.

Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, section 44 – Legislation website