A person or an organisation will, in certain circumstances, owe a ‘duty of care’ to another person or organisation to take reasonable care to prevent them being harmed. Whether a duty of care exists will depend on the relationship between those concerned. In sport, those who may have a duty of care include people who assume a responsibility (for instance, by agreeing to coach an athlete or referee a game), or those who have relevant skills or expertise (for instance, a sports administrator).
- Sporting organisations, administrators and facility managers usually have a duty of care to participants to take reasonable care to ensure that safe playing surfaces and equipment are provided.
- Participants have a duty to ensure that they take reasonable steps to prevent injury to other participants, officials or spectators in the course of play.
- Doctors have a duty of care to their patients to take reasonable steps to provide them with proper information and health care.
Duty of care requires everything ‘reasonably practicable’ to be done to protect the health and safety of others at the workplace. This duty is placed on:
- all employers;
- their employees; and
- any others who have an influence on the hazards in a workplace.
The latter includes contractors and those who design, manufacture, import, supply or install plant, equipment or materials used in the workplace.
‘Reasonably practicable’ means that the requirements of the law vary with the degree of risk in a particular activity or environment which must be balanced against the time, trouble and cost of taking measures to control the risk. It allows the duty holder to choose the most efficient means for controlling a particular risk from the range of feasible possibilities preferably in accordance with the ‘hierarchy of control’.
This qualification allows those responsible to meet their duty of care at the lowest cost. It also requires changes in technology and knowledge to be incorporated but only as and when it is efficient to do so. The duty holder must show that it was not reasonably practicable to do more than what was done or that they have taken ‘reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence’.
Specific rights and duties logically flow from the duty of care. These include:
- provision and maintenance of safe plant and systems of work;
- safe systems of work in connection with plant and substances;
- a safe working environment and adequate welfare facilities;
- information and instruction on workplace hazards and supervision of employees in safe work;
- monitoring the health of their employees and related records keeping;
- employment of qualified persons to provide health and safety advice;
- nomination of a senior employer representative; and
- monitoring conditions at any workplace under their control and management.
These are representative of the employer’s specific duties in all Australian States and Territories.
The ‘hierarchy of control’ refers to the range of feasible options for managing the risk to health and safety. The hierarchy normally ranges over the following controls: elimination of the hazard; its substitution with a less harmful version; its redesign; engineering controls; isolation of the hazard from people at the workplace; safe work practices; redesigning work systems; and the use of personal protective equipment by people at the workplace.
Source: Industry Commission, Work, Health and Safety, Report No. 47, Sept 1995
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