When the legal right for the woman to get a bit of fresh air in should have been risk assessed
What happened?
A 60 year-old school clerical assistant was working at a school in Glasgow. She stood on a toilet. She wanted to open a window, and being shorter than the head teacher, she couldn’t reach it from the ground. She had never pointed this out to anyone, or requested an alternative means of opening the window.
Unfortunately, the bowl capsized, causing her to fall and suffer serious injuries to her foot. The women made a claim against Glasgow City Council, who were responsible for the school.
Legal Outcome
In the court case in 2010, the judge concluded it was reasonable that the school management would not have considered the likelihood of the woman’s accident significant.
However, on appeal, the higher court (inner court in Scotland) judge referred to the requirement in Regulation 20 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations that ‘the rooms containing (sanitary conveniences) are adequately ventilated’. In addition, Regulation 15 (1) requires that ‘No window, skylight or ventilator which is capable of being opened shall be likely to be opened, closed or adjusted in a manner which exposes any person performing such operation to a risk to his health or safety.’
Toilet windows and their safe opening are, however, significant, and the judge decided that a risk assessment should have considered this hazard.
The court awarded the woman damages of £15,900, cut from £31,800 to take account of her contributory negligence (50%).
What can we learn from what happened?
An interesting case in the way the Workplace Regulations combined with an employer’s general duty of care under HASAWA to generate the need to assess a very unusual risk. That said, if the school had known of the woman’s actions in using the toilet as a way of working at height, then yes they really should have assessed the relevant risks, but they didn’t, and this explains the 50% contributory negligence.
Source of Information
Bridget Leathley – from her ‘The Safer Choice’ website