The burden on businesses – particularly those recognised as low-risk – to comply with health and safety laws must be reduced and regulations made more industry-specific, according to a major employers’ group.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) made the call as it revealed that 47 per cent of businesses it questioned as part of a recent survey identified health and safety “yellow tape”* as a burden.

In a new report, Health and safety: a risky business?, the BCC reveals that nearly a fifth (18 per cent) of sole traders identified health and safety regulation as a major barrier to recruiting their first employee.

Calculating the cumulative cost of health and safety regulation at more than £4 billion, the BCC report calls for:

• health and safety regulations to be streamlined and simplified to reduce costs and make legislation more effective;
• regulations to be tailored to the risk level of the workplace to reduce the burden on low-risk businesses;
• the self-employed to be exempt from certain health and safety legislation, as recommended by the 2006 Davidson review; and
• the elimination of any instances of EU health and safety directives duplicating existing domestic regulations and imposing extra burdens on business.

Commenting on the report, the BCC’s director-general, David Frost, said: “Health and safety regulation in the workplace is important, but it must be made more industry-specific.

“The UK has a good record on health and safety and preventing accidents at work. However, employers are dealing with a multitude of regulations that do not necessarily add to the safety of workers. The Government’s Red Tape Challenge lists 131 separate health and safety regulations. The sheer volume of rules causes confusion for employers, particularly among smaller firms without the resource to tackle this.”

The report suggests that the amount of legislation that businesses deal with has led, in many cases, to a ‘tick-box’ attitude, which is in conflict with the principles of good health and safety legislation. Yet it also suggests that businesses can often be too cautious and over-compliant as a result of myths and scare stories surrounding the subject.

Abigail Morris, employment advisor at the BCC, explained: “A tick-box culture, in this context, means not properly modelling the risks and being too administration-focused instead of undertaking a proportionate assessment of the risks in the workplace.”

To reduce such over-caution and over-compliance, the BCC stressed the importance of the HSE’s “information function”, and urged the Government to ensure that “despite cuts to [the Executive’s] budget and restrictions on marketing spend, its business engagement and information activities are not diminished”. Earlier this month, the HSE announced it is to close its Infoline telephone service on 30 September, and instead enourage businesses and members of the public seeking information and official guidance on health and safety to visit its website.
 
The BCC report also identifies a disproportionate burden on employers from regulation that fails to distinguish between routine and occasional home-working, and low and high-risk workplaces.

The organisation points out that, in an effort to ease congestion in London, the Government is encouraging employers to allow for increased home-working during the Olympic Games next year. As such, it says ways to reduce the regulatory burden on employers to deal with the risks to home-workers, as well as better guidance on flexible working, should be investigated.

David Frost concluded: “Where regulation is irrelevant or misapplied, we are asking the Government to consolidate and simplify. We welcome the Government’s Löfstedt review into health and safety, and hope this will deliver for business.

“Only a straightforward and more proportionate system of health and safety regulation will make it easier for employers to comply, and allow them to focus on growing their businesses, driving employment and contributing to economic growth.”

* The BCC explained that “yellow tape” is a play on the term “red tape”!