Health & Safety Reforms announced
A package of changes to Britain's health and safety system was
announced this week by Employment Minister Chris Grayling. In
essence, the government will shift the focus of health and safety
activity away from businesses that do the right thing, and
concentrate on higher risk areas and on dealing with serious
breaches of health and safety regulation. This will mean a very
substantial drop in the number of health and safety inspections
carried out in the UK. The cost burden of health and safety will be
taken away from the taxpayer. Instead, those organisations that
gain competitive advantage by flouting the rules will pay for the
costs of putting things right.
Health and safety regulation and legislation will also be
simplified.
The nuclear, offshore and chemical industries are exempt from
the cuts.
The government has identified three categorizations of non-major
hazard industries:
1. Those sectors which present comparatively
high risk and where pro-active inspection remains necessary as part
of the overall regulatory approach- such as construction, waste and
recycling, and areas of manufacturing which are high risk.
2. Those sectors where there remains
comparatively high risk but proactive inspection is not considered
a useful component of future interventions such as agriculture,
quarries, and health and social care.
3. Those areas where proactive inspection is
not justified in terms of outcomes such as low risk manufacturing
(e.g. textiles, clothing, footwear, light engineering, electrical
engineering) and the transport sector.
This means that the HSE will reduce its proactive inspections by
one third (around 11,000 inspections per year). As now, HSE will
work closely with industry bodies to manage and control specific
health and safety risks. In both areas 1 and 2 as above, the HSE
will continue to undertake inspections for enforcement purposes or
to follow up complaints when such an intervention appears to be
necessary.
No industrial areas will be exempted from maintaining good
standards of health and safety. Employers who do not take the
protection of their employees, or those affected by their work
activities seriously will still face intervention by the HSE.
The same comments also apply to local authorities and their
inspection programme.