Safe System of Work in UK Law

First, an employer owes to his employee a duty to exercise reasonable care to ensure that the system of work provided for him is a safe one. The essential characteristic of the duty is that, if it is not performed, it is no defence for the employer to show that he delegated its performance to a person, whether his servant or not his servant, whom he reasonably believed to be competent to perform it. Despite such delegation the employer is liable for the non-performance of the duty.

It was contended for the defendants that the negligence of Captain Sas was not negligence in failing to operate the safe system which he had devised. It was rather casual negligence in the course of operating such system, for which the defendants, since Captain Sas was not their servant, were not liable. It involved abandoning the safe system of work which he had devised and operating in its place a manifestly unsafe system.

It is, in my opinion, for that very reason that the Common Law demands that employers should take reasonable care to lay down a reasonably safe system of work. Their duties are not performed in the calm atmosphere of a board room with the advice of experts. They have to make their decisions on narrow window sills and other places of danger and in circumstances in which the dangers are obscured by repetition.

It would not ordinarily be reasonable to expect an occupier of premises having engaged a contractor whom he has reasonable grounds for regarding as competent, to supervise the contractor's activities in order to ensure that he was discharging his duty to his employees to observe a safe system of work.

Such public servants accept the risks which are inherent in their work, but not the risks which the exercise of reasonable care on the part of those who owe them a duty of care could avoid. An employer owes his employees a duty to take reasonable care to provide safe equipment and a safe system of work, which includes assessing the tasks to be undertaken, training in how to perform those tasks as safely as possible, and supervision in performing them.

It is true that the tug Ina was owned by Stevin and that Captain Sas was employed by Stevin. But Captain Sas and the plaintiff were working together in a small team of three to perform a contract which, as we understand the matter, Nash and Stevin were carrying out together. Indeed, as we have already observed, on alternate shifts the captain of the tug was Captain Clifford, an employee of Nash.