{"id":1573,"date":"2010-06-06T12:14:02","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T11:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2010-06-06T12:21:03","modified_gmt":"2010-06-06T11:21:03","slug":"new-guidelines-for-firefighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1573","title":{"rendered":"New Guidelines for Firefighters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1574\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><div class=\"img size-full wp-image-1574\" style=\"width:400px;\">\r\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Emergency-services.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1574\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Emergency-services.gif\" alt=\"Emergency services\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>\r\n\t<div>Emergency services<\/div>\r\n<\/div><p id=\"caption-attachment-1574\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Health and Safety requirements are not absolutes<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Fire-fighters will be able to respond more effectively to dangerous situations, after the Health and Safety  Executive issude a new <em><strong>policy statement<\/strong><\/em> which says that fire-fighters should not be  prevented from doing their job  of protecting the public.\u00a0 The fire service still has a  duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to protect their  workers\u2019 health and safety.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>These health and safety duties are not absolute and each is qualified by the test of what is reasonably practicable. HSWA, therefore, does not require all risks to be eliminated, and HSE recognises that, even when all reasonably practicable precautions have been taken to deal with foreseeable risks, harm could still occur &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The new guidelines follow the findings of a Fatal Accident Inquiry  in March where Alison Hume died following a fall of 40 feet down a  disused mineshaft near Glasgow.\u00a0 Fire-fighters had been unable to rescue  Alison Hume due to a Health and Safety memo which stated that their  equipment was for saving themselves, not members of the public.\u00a0 Mrs  Hume was eventually rescued by mountain rescue experts but died of a  heart attack just before being brought to the surface.<\/p>\n<p>HSE chair Judith Hackitt stated,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cFire-fighters perform a unique  and indispensable role.\u00a0 It is part of their job to intervene in  dangerous situations to protect people and property.\u00a0 The law expects  that they will themselves be protected as far as is reasonably  practicable &#8211; but in fast moving situations they must exercise their  judgement about what is reasonable and what is not.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Full policy statement is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hse.gov.uk\/services\/fire\/duties.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fire-fighters will be able to respond more effectively to dangerous situations, after the Health and Safety Executive issude a new policy statement which says that fire-fighters should not be prevented from doing their job of protecting the public.\u00a0 The fire service still has a duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1577,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions\/1577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}