If you have been keeping up with the news lately, you may have heard of the calls for law changes for sun tanning salons; in particular the unsupervised ones.
Personaly I am amazed there is such thing as an unsupervised tanning salon, given the nature of the service they provide!
Thesun.co.uk has reported of the 14 year old girl who earlier this year suffered 70% burns to her body after spending almost 20 minutes in a sun bed! (source).
The girl has placed £1 in a coin operated sun bed for five minutes before adding a further £3 for a further 15 minutes after she felt she was not getting tanned enough. She was rushed to hospital later that day with first degree burns to three quarters of her body and given treatment to rehydrate her body.
The owner of the Lextan Salon in South Wales, James Hadley, has been warned he may face a jail sentence after admitting to numerous breaches of health and safety rules, including failing to ensure his premises were staffed during opening hours, failing to ensure goggles were available for customers, failing to ensure the sun beds were capped at a minimum of 15 minutes exposure, employing a young person without conducting an appropriate risk assessment, and making false statements to local council investigators, the report describes.
It is reported that the salon opens at 7:30am by a time operated automatic lock, opening until 9:30pm; meaning the salon could be unmanned for a whole 14 hours it is open. During this time customers would be completely unsupervised with no safety guidance, instruction or assistance provided.
It is unknown at present if the young girl will suffer any long term damage.
Companies and individuals providing services of this nature have a clear responsibility to ensure customers can not come to any harm. The defence of Mr James Hadley stated that customers use the salons of their own free will, and choosing to ignore warning signs is down to them. This is not an excuse, and the courts have recognised this!
Health and safety legislation is in place to protect people and to provide guidance to companies and business owners to ensure their service does not cause injury to others.
When a company or an individual breaches these health and safety laws, they are negligent in their duty of care over the customer.
If you have been injured in a similar incident, our advice is to seek the professional opinion from an independent expert personal injury solicitor to find out where you stand.
