Description
The Court of Appeal held that the requirement in the Health and Safety Executive's policy on granting exemptions from health and safety legislation, that there should be no reasonably practicable alternative way of complying with the statutory provision, was directed to the position of the applicant seeking the exemption rather than to the world at large. The issue was an objective question of construction; it did not matter what the policy maker intended the policy to mean or what the decision maker under the policy could reasonably interpret it to mean. The test, therefore, is whether there were reasonably practicable alternatives available to a particular applicant.
