LRD guides and handbook July 2015

Health and safety law 2015

Chapter 1

1. The structure of health and safety law

[ch 1: page 13]

Changes and developments since last year

• The Deregulation Act 2015 gained Royal Assent in March 2015 and provides the government with the means to exempt some 1.8 million self-employed people from health and safety law.

• The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) completed its work revising, consolidating and withdrawing fifteen Approved Codes of Practice (ACoPs) following a review prompted by the 2011 Löfstedt Review: Reclaiming health and safety for all (see page 19).

• Several new health and safety regulations have come into force. These include the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015; Control of Major Accident Hazard (COMAH) Regulations 2015; Mines Regulations 2014; Petroleum (Consolidation) Regulations 2014; Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) Regulations 2014; Acetylene Safety (England and Wales and Scotland) Regulations 2014; Explosives Regulations 2014.

The European Regulation on Classification, Labelling and Packaging of Substances and Mixtures has now fully replaced the Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations 2009 (CHIP 4).

• The Explosives Regulations 2104.