1. The structure of health and safety law

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.