Duty of care audits

The Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991 require that the waste generator take responsibility for the waste from cradle to grave. The duty does not end when the waste leaves the premises but extends to ensure that it is treated in a proper manner throughout its transportation and final disposal. It is important that a potential waste contractor is subjected to a Duty of Care audit prior to final selection. 

An example of a suitable set of questions to ask when carrying out a Duty of Care audit is as follows ... 

Suppliers should be advised at the outset of an audit that they wiU be accorded the opportunity to review and correct a draft of the Audit Report before it is issued, as we have mentioned above. There should also be some agreement as to the timetable expected for the issue of a draft report. It is not proper for a supplier to seek to approve the audit report since that could amount to an attempt to gag the auditor. By permitting the audit in the first place, the supplier has effectively given the auditor permission to exercise his/her professional impartiality and this freedom may not subsequently be withdrawn. The contents of the report are the auditor s opinions and should not be influenced except where they are based on factual misconceptions that must be corrected by the supplier. The auditor has a duty of care to the supplier to permit this. The supplier should retain a copy of the draft Audit Report with a note of their review comments. A final copy of the approved and issued report must also be furnished to the supplier by the auditor as the basis for future business relationships. 

This represented a big step away from the specialised technical inspector, implied a judicial or organisational audit and was easy to combine with a general principle of duty of care (Lord Robens, 1972). 

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