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Health and Safety at Work Act 2015

Health and safety duties - Duties of officers, workers, and other persons

44: Duty of officers

You could also call this:

“Officers must ensure their organisation follows health and safety laws”

If you’re an officer of a PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking), you have to make sure the PCBU follows its health and safety duties under the law. You need to be careful and do your job well, just like any reasonable officer would do in the same situation. You should think about what kind of business it is and what your job involves.

You need to take reasonable steps to be diligent. This means you should:

Learn about work health and safety and keep your knowledge up to date.

Understand what the PCBU does and what risks are involved in its work.

Make sure the PCBU has and uses good ways to get rid of or reduce health and safety risks at work.

Make sure the PCBU has good ways to get information about accidents, hazards, and risks, and can respond to this information quickly.

Make sure the PCBU has and uses ways to follow all its duties under this law.

Check that all these things are actually being done.

If you’re elected to a local council, you don’t have to do these things for organisations controlled by the council, unless you’re also an officer of that organisation.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM5976912.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Workplace safety
Work and jobs > Worker rights
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“Workers' responsibilities for health and safety at work”

Part 2 Health and safety duties
Duties of officers, workers, and other persons

44Duty of officers

  1. If a PCBU has a duty or an obligation under this Act, an officer of the PCBU must exercise due diligence to ensure that the PCBU complies with that duty or obligation.

  2. For the purposes of subsection (1), an officer of a PCBU must exercise the care, diligence, and skill that a reasonable officer would exercise in the same circumstances, taking into account (without limitation)—

  3. the nature of the business or undertaking; and
    1. the position of the officer and the nature of the responsibilities undertaken by the officer.

      1. Despite subsection (1), a member of the governing body of a territorial authority or regional council elected in accordance with the Local Electoral Act 2001 does not have a duty to exercise due diligence to ensure that any council-controlled organisation (as defined in section 6 of the Local Government Act 2002) complies with its duties or obligations under this Act unless that member is also an officer of that council-controlled organisation.

      2. In this section, due diligence includes taking reasonable steps—

      3. to acquire, and keep up to date, knowledge of work health and safety matters; and
        1. to gain an understanding of the nature of the operations of the business or undertaking of the PCBU and generally of the hazards and risks associated with those operations; and
          1. to ensure that the PCBU has available for use, and uses, appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety from work carried out as part of the conduct of the business or undertaking; and
            1. to ensure that the PCBU has appropriate processes for receiving and considering information regarding incidents, hazards, and risks and for responding in a timely way to that information; and
              1. to ensure that the PCBU has, and implements, processes for complying with any duty or obligation of the PCBU under this Act; and
                1. to verify the provision and use of the resources and processes referred to in paragraphs (c) to (e).

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