ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the foundations on which appropriate health and safety management systems may be built. It describes the legal responsibilities that exist between duty-holders under the Construction Regulations to ensure that health and safety is fully integrated into the management of any construction project and to encourage everyone involved with the project to work together effectively. The level of risk remaining when controls have been adopted is known as the residual risk. The moral reasons are centred on the need to protect people from injury and disease while they are at work. The legal reasons are embodied in the criminal and civil law, and the financial reasons come as a consequence of infringements of health and safety law with the consequent fines, compensation payments, associated financial costs and even, in extreme cases, imprisonment. Work-related ill health and occupational disease can lead to absence from work and, in some cases, to death.
