Safety cascade

Leaders must believe that harm-free care is achievable. Leaders create the conditions for seeking knowledge and improvement. The cultural shift toward safety cascades from the attitudes and responses of leaders who clearly state that harm-free care is an aim that the organization will achieve. 

The new arrangements for health and safety which accompanied privatization were referred to by those in the industry as a safety cascade . This describes a system which greatly extends previous notions of self-regulation, by making the infrastructure controllers responsible for overseeing the safety of the operational network under the supervision of HSE . These controllers thus have responsibihties for their own activities under the HSW Act and for the entire operational network under the 1993 Railways Act. The key to this system is the Railway Safety Case (RSC). 

Privatization and the Safety Cascade Table 11.2. Worker fatalities, 1995/6-1997/8... 

The most serious doubts raised by the BR research and subsequent developments on Britain s railways centre on enforced self-regulation and the extent to which this regime should be adopted. In particular the safety cascade system raises a variety of worries. Prominent here are concerns about the independence of the industry-based regulator. This is especially so when the company vested with major regulatory responsibilities is in a contractual relationship with the regulated concerning access to the industry (in this case via the rail network) and the financial arrangements for this. 

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