New legislation to protect emergecy workers…

Saturday 3 February 2007 at 5:10 pm | In News | Post Comment

Fire EngineThe Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 contains two new offences.
1. To obstruct or hinder certain emergency workers who are responding to emergency circumstances.
2. To hinder or obstruct those who are assisting emergency workers responding to emergency circumstances.

This will cover obstructing those who, for example, are fetching equipment or directing traffic during an incident to assist the emergency workers. Emergency workers are defined as firefighters, ambulance workers and those transporting blood, organs or equipment on behalf of the NHS, coastguards and lifeboat crews. The police already have their own obstruction offence as do prison officers.

These offences protect personnel who respond to ‘blue-light’ situations, against such activity as parking where an emergency vehicle cannot get by and refusing to move, or damaging an emergency vehicle or equipment, and giving false information at the scene of an emergency, which would delay or mislead emergency workers. But it would not cover deliberate hoax calls, which are dealt with in other legislation. 

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