Duty Holders

You’re Called A Duty-Holder?
When There’s A H&S Incident, What Should You Do?

First, who exactly is a duty-holder? It’s a role specified under the current Health & Safety in Employment Act 1992 (HSE Act) and Hazardous Substances and New Organism Act 1996 (HSNO Act). A duty-holder can be an employer, a principal, a person who controls places of work, self-employed, an employee, a person in charge, or a person selling or supplying plant for use on a place of work.

There are specific tasks required of a duty-holder when there’s any health & safety incident. Regulatory duty-holder's reviews are investigations of health & safety incidents conducted by duty-holders at the request of a health and safety inspector. They are requested when the H&S inspectorate becomes aware of a health and safety incident at your workplace. You should not only examine the incident yourself (as is required under the Health & Safety in Employment Act 1992), but also provide a report.

The ideal result of a duty-holder's review is that the improvements you make to your workplace health & safety systems are sustainable. You fix not only the immediate problem, but also address everything that contributed to it to make sure that it won’t happen again. There may be a visit to your workplace to check that the improvements described in your report have been completed or are under way.

READ MORE: http://www.business.govt.nz/healthandsafetygroup/tools-resources/duty-holder-review