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In addition to the high-risk sectors above, proactive inspections will also be withdrawn from several lower-risk industries, including transport, local authority-administered education provision, electricity generation, postal and courier services,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.”€
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Health and Safety has nothing to do with the recession. It is a joke for a Government saying Health aned Safety has contributed to the slow down in economic growth – utter rubbish. This approach of reduction indicates a complete lack of understanding of ensuring a preventative strategy is maintained through inspection by the HSE. The Government should realise that H&S is not about cost it is about what it can save. Will there be respect when the fatals go up which I suggest will surely happen.
Cost recovery means that HSE will be expected to go digging for breaches (no matter how minor) to generate income. So instead of a ‘common sense approach’ to H&S which we currently have, it will be full of the sort of nitpicking that Lord Young was promising to get rid of.
Bit my tongue now since the election. New this was coming down the line the Conservative party in particular have never been a friend of working people, profit before people, the liberal party are so desperate for power that they agree with anything as they have done, principles what principles. Now there will be less inspections change to regulations only there to protect people. What cost to competition when legislation provides a level playing field? If enforced correctly H&S is political.
I suspect your comment is slightly tongue in cheek Paul!
…. but I agree that if you care about safety at work, please join HSE Inspectors at the Prospect section at the March for the Alternative, London Embankment 11.00am this Sat 26th! see you all there!
So huge he had to brown-nose around the Lib Dems touting huge ministerial salaries to entice them, in order to get the numerical majority to form a Government. Shame he’s never had a real job so he could have experienced how real employers behave towards their staff. A 12 hour shift in a taxi office with no toilet or drinking water, damp and poorly lit and ventilated might have sharpened up his appreciation. Or any one of the hundreds of boring and soul-destroying jobs most folk have to do.
It appears that Mr Grayling is looking for workplace fatalities to move in the same direction as inflationm,unemployment and fuel prices. How can cutting proactive inspections be good practice?
As an Ex HSE Inspector I find this to be amazing and quite frankly ridiculous! We need inspections and the HSE do such an excellent job! Accidents will rise and badly treated people in sweat shops and smaller engineering firms will continue to be exploited. Well done the Government!
Lord Young is a very highly regarded & respected figure who really appreciates
how the recession has affected businesses & individuals. His views really carry a lot of weight & reflect his sensible & balanced political view. Same goes for Mr Cameron who really showed a mature & professional approach to promoting H&S in society before he was elected with a huge majority. He & the deputy prime minister have kept to all their pre-election promises & I respect them all hugely!
This has been coming for a while, with the ongoing “elf & safety” bashing in the press, Lord Young quoting well known myths as truth and the financial pressures on business. You can expect no better from a Conservative government unfortunately. The new consultant register will do little more than raise additional revenue for government; most industries will be HSE visit free and the proposed extension of RIDDOR to 7 days will further encourage less effort on H&S.
Absolute farce. Whilst I understand the need to reduce cost in all public sectors, the reduction in the overall protection of employees through independant policing is nothing short penny pinching. Laws and the enforcement thereof are there for all, not just the so called bigger companies.
With smaller companies, regardless of what field they cover, looking to reduce costs in these times of austerity will undoubtedly see this as an easy way to save money.
Horrific that visits are to be scaled back so drastically.
And … “rules that put an unnecessary burden on business” – interesting to know how these are to be defined & how to go about scrapping them – given that there are increasing requirements dictated by the EU (to which we have signed legal obligations). HSWA and MHSWR alone if supported by v good ACOPs could perhaps cover all! – but they alone wouldn’t reduce the obligations as of course it is not rules that place the main burden per se!