Book News: August 9th, 2005

This Guide is designed to help policy makers address certain risks that the
public faces, and also its perceptions of risk. Government has a role to
protect and assure the public, which includes taking cost effective action
to reduce risk, and to provide accurate and timely information about risk.
It seeks to achieve greater consistency and transparency in decision-making
by recommending greater use of evidenced based values of preventing
fatality, and other harms. More widespread use of evidence-based values
would help to achieve greater consistency in decision making, increasing
risk management activity, and preventing or curbing it in areas where the
benefits are not justified by the costs.

Cost benefit analysis is an important tool that can provide an assessment of
how much society wants devoted to reducing the risk of fatalities and other
harms, given its limited resources and competing demands. Both benefit
analysis and cost effectiveness analysis can help decide where and how best
to deploy its resources in reducing risk and preventing harm.

The guide also includes a tool to help structure and make explicit the
assessment of concerns that may exist about risks of fatality and harm,
which is a strand of decision-making where there is currently little extant
cross-government guidance.

The guide is available at:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/8AB/54/Managing_risks_to_the_public.pdf