H&S Bites 2: Effective Risk Reduction: Using an evidence-informed approach and applying the ‘hierarchy of control’

Continuing our series, across May, we are delivering bite-sized thoughts on practical lessons from some of the leading H&S cases of the last 12 months, as well as some interesting trends identified by our Health & Safety specialist team, part of our wider Corporate crime, investigations and inquiries team.

Key facts: 

• Huws Gray (Builders Merchants) was fined £2.2 million in March 2026 after a worked died when they climbed into a piece of machinery and was crushed when another worker reactivated the machinery, unaware of the other workers movements.
• A particular tragedy in this case, is that the company had used monitoring of working practices to inform its mitigation measures: it had previously identified employees were accessing this zone and in response placed signage on the machinery (as can be seen in this HSE article) warning workers not to do so.
• However, there was evidence this was ineffective in practice – CCTV showed 19 occasions of workers entering the zone in the month preceding the incident–  and there is more that could (and legally should) have been done. Measures introduced after the fatality included added physical guarding of the point of access, changing the system of work, and installing additional CCTV so that a worker looking to active the machinery could see if someone was in it.  
• Huws Gray pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, which requires employers to “ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees” (emphasis added).

Practical Thoughts: 

• These facts are a reminder that the core duties in health & safety law require not only that risks are reduced, but that it is reduced so far as is reasonably practicable. This involves a balancing the quantum of risk on one side of the scale and the sacrifice involved in the measures necessary for mitigating the risk (in terms of time, money etc) on the other scale in order to determine whether the organisation has done all that is reasonably practicable to reduce the risk.
• As part of that assessment, people (including the HSE inspector in this case) sometimes refer to the “the hierarchy of control”, the essence of which is to recognise that certain control measures are likely to be less effective than others. For example, signage deterring access to a dangerous area can be a useful risk reduction measure; but it can more easily be overcome (by ignoring it) that a physical barrier or other engineering measure preventing access to that area. Therefore, where the latter is reasonably practicable, signage alone will not be sufficient.
• It is not atypical for organisations, in the aftermath of an accident, to revisit their risk assessments and recognise there was more than it would have been reasonably practicable to do.  A particularly stark feature in this case is that the organisation did take action in response to prior instances captured on CCTV and implemented a measure (new signage) which illustrated that it had recognised and revisited this particular risk, yet had not done enough.  

If you'd like to receive occasional H&US risk round-ups directly to your mailbox then please scroll to the bottom of this link and join our mailing list.

Read the previous article in our series: H&S Bites 1: Capturing and acting on evidence of safety ‘in practice’ - Burges Salmon