In light of Grenfell, enforcement agencies must engage with the profession, explains David England.
Credit: Hugo Kurk/Alamy Stock Photo
When the first Factory Act was introduced in 1833, there were just four factory inspectors appointed to oversee the compliance with this new law across mainland Britain. Considering that the railways were in their infancy, and that roads were little more than mettled tracks criss-crossing the countryside, the workload of these poor souls – travelling as they did by horseback – must have been unimaginable. It was, however, an improvement on the previous system whereby safety in factories had been under the jurisdiction of local justices of the peace; a system that fell somewhat short when considering how many justices were also factory owners.
Often the difficulty of new legislation is with its enforcement, regardless of how important or constructive that legislation is; the human psyche can be resistant to change, and this can be exacerbated when the subject of money is also involved, as was the case since the Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802 that required factory owners to begin looking after their workers.
By 2011, the number of health and safety inspectors had increased to 1,450 [1] but this has slowly declined ever since, with a comparable reduction in workplace visits by the HSE. It could be argued that, with incidents of workplace harm and disease falling, the need for workplace inspections has subsided. But absences due to ill-health and stress continue to rise, suggesting that there is still work to do: there is still important direction and intervention required from the enforcing agencies.
We should also be wary of becoming complacent about the numbers. The recently finalised report of the Grenfell Inquiry shows us that, when there is little threat of intervention, even those in authority can become complacent in their duty of “protecting persons other than persons at work against risks to health or safety”, according to Section 1(b) of the Health and Safety at Work Act. Grenfell, like so many other large-scale disasters, did not happen because of some freak occurrence or unforeseeable accident. These events invariably occur due to the cumulative failure of control measures that eventually allow a threat to become a consequence.
But the failure of these controls is not confined to large, headline-grabbing events. Everyday, in workplaces all over the country, the cumulative failures of controls can be found causing harm. It may be a broken finger, or a day’s loss of production, but where failure of our controls occurs we must be ready to identify those failures and redouble our efforts to prevent further harm. Today’s broken finger might be something considerably more catastrophic in the future.
This is the day-to-day task of our profession, but it is also the remit of the enforcing agencies to provide the impetus to control risk. Not through fear and admonishment, but through advice and engage. The first four factory inspectors were required to make the rules as they went along: today we have an arsenal of safety legislation with which to comply. Then, as now, we must still use the most effective tool to ensure continued workplace safety: encouragement.
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