UK Road Accident Record Placed in the Spotlight

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has called for the government to commit to publishing a new road safety strategy for England, in the light of recent statistics that point to ‘a dramatic lack of UK road safety progress over the last decade’.

The RoSPA has…

Feb 05, 2024

The RoSPA has highlighted figures from the World Health Organisation’s Global Status Report on Road Safety for 2023, along with its own analysis of recent road safety statistics, which indicate that numbers of road fatalities and injuries have plateaued in the UK since 2010. While road safety in the UK has stalled, there has been a 36 per cent reduction in road deaths across the European region as a whole, according to the RoSPA.

David Walker, Head of Road and Leisure Safety at the RoSPA, said, “We are seeing around 81 people killed or seriously injured on our roads every day, which is unacceptable and evidently linked to the dramatic lack of UK road safety progress over the last decade.

“We cannot and must not wait to act and urge the government to publish its long-overdue Road Safety Strategic Framework for England, and to set out casualty reduction targets that are in line with other G7 nations. Only then can we begin to address our woeful position on the road safety leaderboard.”

Allergy Rules Should Be Tightened for Restaurants, Says FSA

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is urging the government to make it compulsory for restaurants to print allergy information on menus, in a bid to better inform consumers and limit the risk of extreme allergic reactions. There is currently no legal requirement for businesses to make allergens known to customers in print, although FSA guidance recommends they do this. In an effort to mobilise the hospitality sector into listing allergens on menus, the FSA now wants written information to be a…

Employment Judge Embarked on ‘Frolic of his Own’ – EAT Ruling

Employment judges may reconsider their initial conclusions on a case, but that does not give them licence to embark on a wholesale change of mind on the basis of arguments that have not been presented to them. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) made that point in finding that an employment judge went on a frolic of his own. The case concerned a senior employee of a global company who was seconded on a short-term basis to run its operations in Canada. After his commission payments – which in…

Company That Labelled Employees as Self-Employed Receives Comeuppance

Many businesses that persist in labelling their employed staff as self-employed have met their comeuppance during the COVID-19 pandemic. That was certainly so in the case of a company that was ordered to pay compensation of more than £50,000 to a woman who was sacked after asserting her colleagues’ employment rights. The company ran a beauty salon at which the woman was engaged to work as PA to the founder and to provide treatments. Her contract was labelled as a consultancy agreement. When the…