Case study: Wallace v Glasgow City Council, 2010
Think about it
If you’ve come to this page from chapter 7 of my book, you might want to try this thought exercise first. If you just want to read my summary of the case, jump on in.
Ask yourself:
For a risk assessment of a school, someone has suggested the hazard ‘standing on the toilet’ in relation to the toilets used only by members of staff. What likelihood and severity scores would you apply to this hazard? Using the HSE 3×3 matrix, what would your assessment of the risk be? Is this a significant hazard? Does it need to go on your risk assessment?
I’m guessing here, but let’s say a 2 for severity (there would be an injury, but falling off a toilet isn’t likely to be as severe as falling from, say, a ladder) and a 1 for likelihood. These are the staff toilets, not the children’s toilets. So you’d have a tolerable risk. You might even have concluded, like the head teacher at a school in Glasgow, that the hazard didn’t deserve a place in the risk assessment. Why, after all, would an adult stand on a toilet?
Wallace v Glasgow City Council, 2010
Ms Marie Ann Wallace a 60-year-old school clerical assistant, stood on a toilet. She wanted to open a window, and being shorter than the head teacher, she couldn’t reach it from the ground. She had never pointed this out to anyone, or requested an alternative means of opening the window. Unfortunately, the last time she stood on the toilet, the bowl capsized, causing her to fall and suffer serious injuries to her foot. In 2010, the judge concluded it was reasonable that the school management would not have considered the likelihood of Ms Wallace’s accident significant.
However, on appeal, the higher court (inner court in Scotland) judge referred to the requirement in Regulation 20 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations that ‘the rooms containing (sanitary conveniences) are adequately ventilated’. In addition, Regulation 15 (1) requires that ‘No window, skylight or ventilator which is capable of being opened shall be likely to be opened, closed or adjusted in a manner which exposes any person performing such operation to a risk to his health or safety.’ Hence, toilet windows and their safe opening are significant, and the judge decided that a risk assessment should have considered this hazard. The court awarded Ms Wallace damages of £15,900, cut from £31,800 to take account of her contributory negligence.