Clare Hedger, Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service's Deputy Chief Officer, is pictured adding her signature.

18 July 2008

Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Fire Authority signed up today to a campaign to combat the myths undermining health and safety legislation.

Among the more unusual ones to hit the headlines in recent years was the rumour that all trapeze artists would have to wear hard hats!

Together with Buckinghamshire County Council, Aylesbury Vale District Council, Chiltern District Council, South Bucks District Council and Wycombe District Council, it publicly signed up to the Health and Safety Executive’s 10 principles of sensible risk management.

These principles give organisations practical advice on what risk management should – and should not - be about.

Heather Bryant, Head of the HSE's East & South East Division, said: “Some of the health and safety stories you hear are just myths and some are instances where it is used as an excuse to justify unpopular decisions. 

"Sensible risk management is about managing risks that cause real harm and suffering, not bureaucratic back-covering. We are about keeping people safe, not stopping people from living.”

Clare Hedger, Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service’s Deputy Chief Officer, said: “Health and safety is obviously vital in an organisation such as ours.

"We have always looked upon health and safety as sensible and appropriate legislation that is there to help us work safely – it is certainly not there to prevent us from doing our work!”

The 10 principles of sensible risk management

Sensible risk management is about:

• Ensuring that workers and the public are properly protected
  
  
• Providing overall benefit to society by balancing benefits and risks, with a focus on reducing real risks – both those which arise more often and those with serious consequences
  
  
• Enabling innovation and learning, not stifling them
  
  
• Ensuring that those who create risks manage them responsibly and understand that failure to manage real risks responsibly is likely to lead to robust action
  
  
• Enabling individuals to understand that as well as the right to protection, they also have to exercise responsibility

Sensible risk management is not about:

• Creating a totally risk-free society
  
  
• Generating useless paperwork mountains
  
  
• Scaring people by exaggerating or publicising trivial risks
  
  
• Stopping important recreational and learning activities for individuals where the risks are managed
  
  
• Reducing protection of people from risks that cause real harm and suffering