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ARTICLE · 10 JULY 2016

Chain of Responsibility: Important changes that will affect your business

Holding Redlich
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The transport industry needs to understand recent changes to the Chain of Responsibility laws.

AustraliaTransport
Nathan Cecil
Nathan Cecil
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Substantial amendments to the Chain of Responsibility (CoR) laws will change the duties owed and defences available, increase the penalties applicable and more closely align the laws with Work Health & Safety laws. As a result, compliance will need to be reviewed in advance of the new laws.

CoR is due to be extensively remodelled in 2016 to "better align with national safety laws, improve compliance and simplify enforcement". CoR is now (or should be) very firmly at the core of an organisation's safety management system - and all businesses in the supply chain will need to consider how these changes will affect your business.

What will change?

Within the safety task, greater focus is now being placed on CoR. Existing obligations will be reformulated as 'primary duties'. Each CoR party will now have a primary duty of care to ensure, so far as 'reasonably practicable', the safety of road transport operations. This will include operations outside of their direct

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