On 1st July all four UK nations will have anti-smoking laws in
place, but businesses will face four different and often
conflicting sets of laws and regulations regarding smoking. While a
building only has to comply with one set of laws, vehicles could be
used in all four UK nations, posing a problem for managers.
According to a leading employment lawyer, it is possible to
comply with all four sets of laws by adopting as company policy the
strictest laws out of the four countries. Most cars are in fact
exempt in Scotland, and the law varies in the other countries on
what vehicles can be exempt.
"If you are a company whereby your employees drive to each of
the four jurisdictions within the UK my advice would be to
introduce a policy that all company vehicles should be smoke free,"
said Sara Sawicki, an employment law partner at Pinsent Masons, the
law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM.
"The signage that is included in the vehicle should be the
international no smoking sign which should be at least 75
millimetres in diameter, which would meet the size requirement in
Wales and Northern Ireland, but also to adopt the Scottish
requirement as to wording," said Sawicki.
The Scottish law has no minimum size requirement for signs, but
is the only law to say that there must be text along with the no
smoking symbol, and that the sign must also carry the details of an
owner or manager to whom complaints about smoking can be
addressed.
There are a number of other differences between the laws in
place across the UK. In Wales and Northern Ireland, signs must be
75 millimetres in diameter or larger. In England they only have to
be 70mm across.
Signs must be visible in all vehicles used for business.
Vehicles used primarily for private purposes are exempt, but
business vehicles must carry no smoking signs even when they are
not being used for work.
The legislation in England says that cars must be 'smoke free',
meaning that smoking never takes place in them. However, if only
one person uses a particular car in England, the smoking ban does
not apply.
The differences in national laws throw up curious potential
legal problems. An employee driving a work car in Scotland could
have a cigarette legally in the car and extinguish it. If that
employee then drives to England he has committed no offence, but
the vehicle is no longer a smoke free vehicle, which is an offence
in England.
Other potential problems could arise, one company director with
vehicles travelling to all four countries told OUT-LAW.COM. He said
that if an employee in Scotland legally smoked in a work car there,
that car would be the subject of an offence in England even if
driven there purely for leisure purposes.
"A car used for work in Scotland could be liable in England even
if not used for work in England," said the company director, who
asked not to be identified. "That is my interpretation of it,
because the law in England says that it applies to a no smoke
vehicle used for work purposes, it doesn't say a vehicle used for
work in England."
"The problem with these regulations is that we don't know how
people will interpret those grey areas," said the director.
"The fact that you have lit a cigarette in Scotland; does that
now become a smoking premises? I think it would be difficult to run
that argument if somebody was stopped," said Sawicki. " But who
knows? When you look into the regulations in the various different
jurisdictions there are an awful lot of grey areas."
