The company appealed against a prohibition notice with regard to its operation of a zoo. A keeper had been attacked by tigers while they were being fed. He had died. The company appealed the terms of the notices, saying that the Act had to allow for the idiosyncracies of the particular business. The company sought particularly to establish social contact between keepers and their animals. The real issue was whether the company could properly allow an employee to enter the tigers’ enclosure. The code of practice required keepers not to enter the enclosure.
Held: The safety legislation cannot be used to specify what work can be done, only the manner in which it was to be done: ‘although in the ordinary way a dangerous piece of machinery must be securely fenced, there may be circumstances concerned with the particular task that the employer (or his employee) is doing (their work) which make it necessary that the activity, which would by any ordinary standards be regarded as dangerous, may nevertheless have a legitimacy which justifies it but which would otherwise have laid the employer open to proceedings for a breach of his statutory duty.’ and ‘The Act is not seeking to legislate as to what work could or could not be performed, but is properly concerned with the manner of its doing. ‘
Citations:
Times 13-Dec-1996, [1996] EWHC Admin 282
Links:
Statutes:
Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 2
Citing:
Cited – Coltness Iron Co v Sharp HL 1938
The court considered the extent of the duty of care owed by an employer to its employees under the Act: (Atkin) ‘In the facts of this case where the dangerous machinery was exposed for only a few minutes as the only means of effecting necessary . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Health and Safety, Animals, Licensing
Updated: 25 May 2022; Ref: scu.136830