The following post was originally written as a newsletter article for ETNZ.
A couple of weeks ago I went to a seminar on the new health and safety law regulations. “Wow, you lead a fascinating life Cathy” I hear you say… Well in that hour of my life I am never getting back here is what I learned to share with you all…..
The new health and safety laws due come into affect later this year will be accompanied by a host of new regulations. The draft for the first of these has been published by MBIE (see the following link) and they are calling for feedback on these (up to 15 May)
Now, the process for this is that there will be a bunch of regulations developed first to roll out with the new laws. In many cases these are recently developed regulations that just need to be tweaked to fit the new laws (such as those for the mining and adventure industries that have been developed in the past couple of years). Or they are the most crucial regulations such as those that deal with “major hazard facilities” that could cause catastrophic damage to communities and the environment if something goes wrong (this probably won’t affect most of us, unless you are planning a pyrotechnics gig in a petrol-chemical facility or something like that…). Following this first batch more regulations will be rolled out over the next few years to deal with specific aspects of the new law and to replace some of the very old and dated regulations currently in place.
Of most relevance to our industry in this first batch are the “General Risk and Workplace Management” regulations. Many of these are very similar as what already exist in the Health and Safety in Employment Regulations (1995) around things like provision of facilities for workers and duties to young persons. Although many of the regulations are the same as what we currently have, we do now have the opportunity to review the practicality and relevance of these to our industry and provide feedback if they are impractical to us…. particularly with view to the fact that the penalties for non-compliance will also be included in the new regulations. One example that springs to my mind is a 15-year-old actor who is in a show that finishes at 10.30pm. Currently that is in breach of the regulations. There is also the addition of regulations around “falling objects” that is of direct relevance to many of our workplaces.
Initial feedback to MBIE on the first batch of regulations closes on 15 May 2015.
Cathy Knowsley – HiViz Event Management www.hivizevents.co.nz (and ETNZ committee member)
