ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the United Kingdom (UK) health and safety legal framework and related matters. It presents an overview of the highly complex area of regulating, managing and protecting health, safety and welfare at work. The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) is a nine-person body appointed by Government which, along with its full-time Chair, has overall responsibility for formulating health and safety law and policy. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the body appointed by the Commission to implement these policy decisions and enforce the law, with day-to-day enforcement being carried out by local HSE inspectors. Musculoskeletal disorders remain a major cause of work-related ill-health across the UK, prompting the HSE to identify this as a priority area following publication of the Revitalising Health and Safety Strategy and Securing Health Together long-term occupational health strategy in 2000.
