Office working environments to be regulated by Lord Young of Graffham

There will be an overhaul of health and safety in office workplaces, with the plan to skim down the bureaucracy and reinstate a mood of what Lord Young feels is ‘common sense’.

The Prime Minister David Cameron has appointed Lord Young, a former minister under Margaret Thatcher’s government, to the role of revolutionising the way health and safety regulations are operated in the UK.

Lord Young has vowed to revolutionise the legal regulations that govern health and safety in offices by announcing, “We need a system that is proportionate and not bureaucratic.”

The review will weed out needless bureaucracy and is intended to streamline how the laws are implemented by management and thus how they impact upon the workforce.

Director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, Adam Marshall, commented on the appointment and its ramifications, “While it’s absolutely crucial for employers to take steps to ensure people are safe in the workplace, the proliferation of health and safety rules has resulted in more bureaucracy and less common sense.”

The regulations which were brought into action in 1974, mainly to oversee factory workers, have thought to have been over-enforced. Mr Cameron has said of the appointment that will change the way offices adhere to health and safety rules, “We need a sensible new approach that makes clear these laws are intended to protect people, not overwhelm businesses with red tape.”