ON APPROVAL

The last 12 months have witnessed ever tougher enforcement due to the impact of measures such as the Health & Safety (Offences) Act 2008 and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. The 2008 Act has raised fines, made imprisonment an option for most health & safety offences and made certain offences, formerly triable only in the lower courts, triable in either the lower or higher courts. Under the 2007 Act a conviction for corporate manslaughter may result from serious management failures leading to a gross breach of a duty of care. The first corporate manslaughter charges were laid in 2009. This new edition integrates consideration of the new HSE Strategy of 2009 - The Health and Safety of Great Britain \\ Be part of the solution into the text. Other recent developments include the HSE Enforcement Policy Statement (2009) and Business Plan 2009/10. There has been major legislative amendment through numerous recent minor amendments. In relation to the EU, the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009 has meant the replacement of the EC Treaty by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union - with all of the consequential amendments which this entailed. All of this necessitates a new approach - and a new Handbook - “Health & Safety at Work Brief”. The Handbook is written by a Solicitor with extensive experience of health and safety law in a major British plc. In its largest Edition ever, the text comprises some 1100 A5 pages in two loose-leaf Volumes and is contained in two smart, foam-padded leather-look Binders. Designed as either a stand-alone text or a companion volume to "Environment Brief", "Health & Safety at Work Brief" features both cross-referencing within its text and to the text of "Environment Brief". Volume 1 is an independent commentary of some 550 pages explaining the law, practice and policy. “Health & Safety at Work Brief” constitutes one stop treatment of health and safety subject-matters. It provides a thoroughly integrated treatment of the following features of health and safety: a user-friendly layout by subject-matter and by numbered paragraphs; reference to current legislation; explanation of the law from reproduction of the key points in Approved Codes of Practice or Guidance Notes and from some 200 cases of leading case-law; reference to EU and other applicable legislation; and further reading from HSE publications and several hundred websites. Volume 2 comprises some 520 pages reproducing verbatim the consolidated legislative texts of Key Acts and Regulations.