It has been a busy couple of years for the HSE, what with the various reviews, their recommendations, and the recession affecting everything in the background but the regulator is confident that it can maintain the UK’s existing high health and safety standards while continuing to reduce workplace injuries and ill health.
This was the core message delivered by HSE board member Robin Dahlberg, in his opening address to visitors to Safety & Health Expo at the NEC this morning (15 May). Touching on six of the Executive’s current key issues – including the Fees for Intervention scheme, the establishment of two new ‘challenge panels’ and the new guidance to clarify PAT testing requirements for low-risk businesses – Mr Dahlberg emphasised throughout that the HSE remains fully committed to maintaining and strengthening the health and safety system.
With regard to the recommendations of both the Young and Lofstedt reviews, he told visitors: “We will deliver some of these in different ways but above all, we want to ensure that our deliver is effective and efficient. And we need your help to do that. We have been working with industry, and it is important that we all work together. We all need to enable things to happen and avoid creating unnecessary barriers to compliance.”
He continued: “As Professor Lofstedt pointed out, paperwork, bureaucracy and over-the-top requirements are not an effective way of keeping people safe at work. Our actions need to be proportionate to be effective. Health and safety needs to help us all get on with our lives, and it needs to help the economy. It does not need to get in the way of progress.”
Aware of the concerns expressed by many stakeholders that the regulator’s plans to reduce proactive inspections would have a detrimental effect on Britain’s health and safety standards, Mr Dahlberg assured the audience that this would not be the case.
He explained: “We want to make it easier for those who are doing all they can to comply. However, the HSE will not change at all its response to incidents, and we will continue to deal with them according to our established criteria.”
Similarly, on the subject of the controversial ‘Fees for Intervention’ scheme (FFI), Mr Dahlberg emphasised that “law-abiding businesses do not need to worry. The costs for our time and efforts through investigating incidents will be recovered only from those who break health and safety laws.”
He concluded by expressing the HSE’s pride in being involved in the UK’s event of a lifetime – the 2012 Olympic Games. He said: “Back at the beginning of the project, we committed to act as a proportionate regulator, and we have worked with all the key duty-holders to ensure that health and safety was built into the DNA of the project. Our focus was on leadership, competence and the management of contractors, and the fact that there were fewer than 150 reported injuries and no fatalities proves that you can have large building projects that are delivered on time and budget, and without harming workers.”
The regulator’s role now, he explained, has moved to a reactive one, as it has no proactive inspection plans for during the Games themselves. “However,” said Mr Dahlberg, “we will be keeping a watching brief and will also be prepared to provide an effective and efficient emergency response, alongside our local-authority colleagues, who are similarly primed. We are proud to be part of the effort to produce what should be a hugely successful Games for the UK.”
Below is a video interview with Robin before the opening of the SHP Legal Arena:
