IN recent days announcements have been made by numerous supermarkets that they intend to prevent customers from entering their stores if they refuse to wear a mask (except for medical reasons and other exemptions). My question regarding the lack of such enforcement of mask wearing by customers is: why, under the terms of the Health and Safety at Work Act, have employers not been obliged, using the risk assessment process, to enforce the wearing of face masks by all staff and customers for the protection of their own employees since the problems associated with Covid-19 first became apparent?
Whilst not an excuse for any employer in terms of the measures to be introduced for the safety of their employees, as far as I can ascertain current HSE guidance (last reviewed December 31, 2020) makes no mention of the need for face masks in its Covid-19 guidance, which is in itself strange since Scottish Government policy is that people frequenting shops (presumably including employees in supermarkets), must, with some exceptions, wear a mask.