Law, Duties, Enforcement and Competence
How Great Britain health and safety law assigns duties, requires competent support and is enforced in construction.
How to prepare for the CITB MAP test
Build manager-level decisions around role, prevention, coordination, verification and learning rather than memorising isolated site rules.
Core concepts
Concept 1
Organisations and individuals must understand the duties attached to their role and cannot transfer accountability by contract alone.
Exam cue: Identify the dutyholder, activity, people affected and controlling legal source.
Concept 2
Competence combines skills, knowledge, training, experience and organisational capability appropriate to the risk and work.
Exam cue: Test whether the organisation has both capable people and the resources and arrangements to support them.
Concept 3
Enforcement can include advice, notices and prosecution; legal compliance is a minimum rather than the end of risk management.
Exam cue: Correct non-compliance promptly and preserve evidence rather than waiting for an inspector.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Assuming a subcontractor appointment transfers every client or principal-contractor duty.
Guardrail: Do not solve a design, engineering or organisational failure only with a briefing, warning sign or PPE.
Treating a certificate alone as proof of competence for unfamiliar high-risk work.
Guardrail: Do not solve a design, engineering or organisational failure only with a briefing, warning sign or PPE.
Continuing work after a serious control failure because no enforcement officer is present.
Guardrail: Do not solve a design, engineering or organisational failure only with a briefing, warning sign or PPE.
Memory anchors
Role Creates Duty
Identify the legal role before deciding what must be planned, provided, checked or coordinated.
Competence Is More Than a Card
Match skills, knowledge, training, experience and organisational capability to the task.
So Far as Reasonably Practicable
Balance risk against sacrifice only through a defensible prevention analysis, not convenience.
Enforcement Escalates
Inspectors may investigate, require improvement, prohibit dangerous work or support prosecution.
Contract Is Not Escape
Commercial wording cannot remove a statutory duty from the person or organisation that holds it.
Compliance Is the Floor
Meeting a minimum rule does not justify ignoring a foreseeable and controllable risk.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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