Government wields axe over safety inspections

Agriculture, quarries and health and social care are to be excluded from proactive HSE inspections, despite acknowledgement that they remain comparatively high-risk sectors, the Government confirmed today (21 March).

Among a number of sweeping proposals to reform the health and safety regime in Britain, the DWP has approved plans for proactive inspections to fall by a third – around 11,000 inspections a year. It also outlined proposals for the HSE to recover the costs of its inspection and investigation activity, and announced a review of health and safety regulation, with a view to reducing red tape.

Launching the new framework, Safety minister Chris Grayling said: “Of course, it is right to protect employees in the workplace, but Britain’s health and safety culture is also stifling business and holding back economic growth. The purpose of health and safety regulation is to protect people at work, and rightly so. But we need common sense at the heart of the system, and these measures will help root out the needless burden of bureaucracy.”

In addition to the high-risk sectors above, proactive inspections will also be withdrawn from several lower-risk industries, including transport, local authority-administered education provision, electricity generation, postal and courier services, as well as certain areas of manufacturing – for example, textiles, clothing, footwear, light engineering, and electrical engineering.

Proactive inspections will be retained in construction, waste and recycling, and areas of high-risk manufacturing, such as molten and base-metal manufacturing.

The decision to slash inspections has been met with outrage from unions. TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, fumed: “Removing proactive inspections from a large number of workplaces mean that employers can get away with ignoring the law until they kill, or seriously injure someone. This is in no one’s interests and will mean an increase in deaths and injuries, leading to a rush to the bottom as cowboy companies undercut responsible employers by cutting back on safety.”

The Hazards Campaign added: “It is magical thinking for Grayling to claim these proposals will do anything but remove the credible threat of enforcement action and allow non-compliant, criminal employers to get away with harming far more workers with work-related stress, strains and pain, and injuring and killing them.”  The HSE will fill the void left by inspections by increasing joint initiatives with industry bodies to manage and control specific health and safety risks, and by targeting inspections more effectively on areas of greater risk.

The level of regulatory oversight of the major-hazard industries will not be reduced. Nevertheless, the Government is committed to “a continuing programme of modernisation of regulatory approaches and cooperation between regulators to provide a consistent and proportionate approach for business”.

A key aspect of this will involve extending the principles of cost recovery, already well-established in sectors such as offshore and nuclear, to other sectors. It is proposed that the HSE will recover all of the costs of an inspection or investigation at which a serious, material breach in standards is diagnosed, and a requirement to rectify (i.e. an enforcement notice) is formally made, together with the cost of any follow-up work.

Legally-compliant businesses will not be liable for any charge as a result of an HSE inspection and an appeal system will operate in relation to any disputes of this nature.

However, health and safety lawyers have questioned whether the move could cause more companies to appeal an enforcement notice.

James Jevon, a partner at Osborn Abas Hunt, said the proposal “would increase the importance and significance of appealing a notice, as it could be unhelpful and damaging to a defendant if it were to be disclosed during that prosecution that they paid such costs uncontested”.

Mike Appleby, a solicitor at Housemans, agreed, adding: “There is an increasing attempt by the HSE to use notices as evidence of wrongdoing in prosecutions. There is also a number of industries where the HSE does not have the relevant expertise. Are companies going to pay for the HSE to gain that expertise in an investigation with potential enforcement proceedings against them?”

The new health and safety framework, which builds on Lord Young’s review of the compensation culture last year, admits at the outset that changing the “frustrating” health and safety culture in Britain forms a key part of the Coalition’s wider deregulatory agenda. As well as the changes at HSE level, the Government has also vowed to establish an independent review of health and safety regulation, with a view to scrapping rules that put an unnecessary burden on business.

The review, which will be chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, a specialist in risk management at King’s College London, will also recommend changes aimed at clarifying the legal position of employers in cases where employees act in a grossly irresponsible manner.

Mike Macdonald, negotiator at Prospect, which represents HSE inspectors, described it as “perverse” to announce a review after introducing such significant change.

He added: “It looks as if the Government is determined to announce cuts before Professor Ragnar Löfstedt even starts his review. What happens if he concludes that more inspection, not less, is required?”

But head of health & safety at manufacturers’ body EEF, Steve Pointer, welcomed the review. He said: “While much health and safety legislation is fit for purpose some areas remain a problem, and this review has the potential to resolve anomalies, reduce burdens, and so help boost growth.”

To further ease the burden of health and safety regulation on small businesses and low-risk organisations, a new online guidance package has also been launched. Called ‘Health and safety made simple’, the single piece of guidance takes SMEs through their basic health and safety duties, describing what they need to do and how they should do it. The guidance covers: