MAILER v AUSTIN ROVER GROUP PLC [1989] 2 All ER 1087

I find it convenient to consider first the third expression ‘safe and without risks to health’. Counsel for the respondents submitted that, for present purposes, premises should be regarded as ‘safe and without risks to health’ if they are in such condition as to be unlikely to be the cause of injury, harm or risk to health to persons who are, or who may reasonably be expected to be, in them. This interpretation he derived from certain authorities concerned with the construction of s 14(1) of the Factories Act 1937 (now s 14(1) of the Factories Act 1961), which requires that dangerous parts of machinery shall be securely fenced. In a series of leading cases it has become established that, for the purposes of that subsection, machinery is to be regarded as dangerous if it is a reasonably foreseeable cause of injury to anybody acting in a way in which a human being may be reasonably expected to act in circumstances which may be reasonably expected to occur: see Hindle v Birtwistle (1897),2 John Summers & Sons Ltd v Frost (1955)3 and Close v Steel Co of Wales Ltd (1961).4 Furthermore, in Allen v Avon Rubber Co Ltd (1986)5 the definition of ‘dangerous’ in the foregoing cases was invoked by the Court of Appeal for the purpose of interpreting the word ‘safe’ in s 29(1) of the 1961 Act, which provides as follows:

‘There shall, so far as if reasonably practicable, be provided and maintained safe means of access to every place at which any person has at any time to work, and every such place shall, so far as is reasonably practicable, be made and kept safe for any persons working there.’