Key recommendations of the Löfstedt Report
Health & Safety update 07/12/2011
Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, Director of the King's Centre for
Risk Management at King's College London, was appointed by the
Government to chair an independent review of health and safety
earlier this year. His recommendations were published on the 28th
of November 2011.
The Government supports the recommendations of the review and in
its response to the report has stated that it is committed to
taking swift action to implement the key findings. These are:
- The self employed whose work activities pose no potential risk
of harm to others should be exempt from health and safety law.
- HSE should review all of its Approved Codes of Practice (ACoP).
The initial phase of the review should be completed by June 2012 so
businesses have certainty about what is planned and when changes
can be anticipated.
- HSE should undertake a programme of sector specific
consolidations of law to be completed by April 2015.
- Legislation should be changed to give HSE the authority to
direct all local authority health and safety inspection and
enforcement activity. This should ensure that it is consistent and
targeted towards the most hazardous workplaces.
- The original intention of the pre-action protocol standard
disclosure list (Woolf reforms) should be clarified and restated.
Regulatory provisions that impose strict liability should be
reviewed by June 2013. These should be either qualified with
'reasonably practicable' where strict liability is not absolutely
necessary or amended to prevent civil liability from attaching to a
breach of those provisions. In other words - employers will not be
found liable for damages/injury in cases where they have done
everything possible to manage the risk.
- The Government should work more closely with the European
Commission and others, particularly during the planned review in
2013. They must ensure that both new and existing EU health and
safety legislation is risk and evidence-based.