YP Letters: Health and safety...the enemy of productivity as snow strikes

WHEN I was a lad in primary school and it snowed, we used to struggle to school just to make slides as long as the playground. Those that couldn’t or wouldn’t slide avoided them.

Now on the prediction of inclement weather, schools are closed, trains are cancelled just in case, and any accident on a motorway results in it being closed for hours. I’m sure all this started with the advent of the Health and Safety Act. A prime example of a good idea hijacked. This time by claims lawyers.

So, now, all of our industry and institutions spend an inordinate amount of time risk assessing everything, producing policies, and ensuring there is a robust paper trail, which will hold up in court, to justify every decision and action. And the powers-that-be wonder why the UK has an abysmal productivity record.

From: Henry Cobden, Ilkley.

GIVEN the number of people who ‘work from home’ in inclement weather, it reiterates Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s call on your pages (The Yorkshire Post, February 24) for high speed broadband to be the country’s national infrastructure priority, but please spare a thought for those, like NHS staff, who do have to get to work in all weathers.