Bureaucrats creating joyless playgrounds and uninspiring science lessons as a result of overuse of regulations
The chair of the Health and Safety Executive has claimed that "jobsworth" bureaucrats are creating joyless playgrounds and uninspiring science lessons as a result of overuse of regulations.
Judith Hackitt said the "gloves are off" when it comes to tackling people and authorities who cynically use regulations as a "convenient excuse" to avoid paying for children's activities or over fears of being sued.
She said the excessive and unnecessary application of restrictions threatened to spoil children's experience of growing up.
"Don't use health and safety law as a convenient scapegoat or we will challenge you," she warned.
"The creeping culture of risk-aversion and fear of litigation … puts at risk our children's education and preparation for adult life."
She added: "Children today are denied – often on spurious health and safety grounds – many of the formative experiences that shaped my generation. "Playgrounds have become joyless, for fear of a few cuts and bruises. Science in the classroom is becoming sterile and uninspiring." A list of real-life examples cited by Hackitt which she said were wrongly blamed on health and safety included a ban on running at a pancake race and making children wear goggles when playing conkers.
Speaking to the Telegraph, she said that health and safety had become a "shorthand for someone, somewhere, stopping someone from doing something they want to" and had become a "feeble" excuse.
Hackitt said "daft decisions" were being made to ban harmless activities and said that although some people behind the decisions were generally "well meaning" they had gone too far.
More worryingly, she added, was a trend in employers who were using health and safety regulations to "disguise their real motives" of cost-cutting.
She said that organisations were to a large degree concerned less for people's safety but from a fear of personal injury lawyers.
She called on decision-makers to "own your own decisions".
Hackitt's warnings were prompted after Murray mount, where fans at Wimbledon can watch matches on large television screens, was closed over fears that people might slip.
A survey conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in April found an increasingly risk-averse culture in schools and a decline in school trips.
It found that 29% of teachers surveyed said the playground game British bulldog had been banned because it was judged unsafe, 14% of staff said children were not allowed to play conkers and 9% said leapfrog had been banned. Some schools had also banned games such as rugby and football in the playground.
"Health and safety has surely become one of the most well-worn and dispiriting phrases in the English language," she said.