The move to get risk-benefit assessment recognised as a suitable and sufficient form of risk assessment is gathering momentum but still has hurdles to overcome. It seems that some agencies do not want to concede that the benefits of public space and activities should be a primary consideration in determining how safety from injury decisions should be made. This may be because this would result in a transfer of power because, to make balancing decisions, you would need to know about both the risks and the benefits of some place or activity and traditional H&S exponents may know little or nothing about benefits.
The case for RBA was strongly put in 2008 by Play England and the government in its ‘Managing risk in play provision – implementation guide’ (http://www.playengland.org.uk/resources/managing-risk-in-play-provision-implementation-guide.aspx). The case has more recently been expressed by the National Tree Safety Group in its ‘Common sense risk management of trees’ published by the Forestry Commission (http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/FCMS024.pdf/$FILE/FCMS024.pdf), as well as by the long-standing Visitor Safety in the Countryside Group (http://vscg.co.uk/). Other organisations with strong interests include the Association of Heads of Outdoor Education Centres and the English Outdoor Council.
Overall, there is a widespread desire to get the benefits of public life back on the agenda of health and safety. Paradoxically, one of these benefits is health. But as the Trades Union Congress has put it, “Sadly we have a society that seems to see preventing injury as being more important than preventing illness.”