Health and Safety Executive sets out its delivery plans
Howard Fidderman reports on the unrelenting efforts of the coalition Government to reform the UK's approach to health and safety.
On this page:
HSE "Delivery plan"
Effective control of risks
Transforming the HSE approach
Ownership of risk
Reviewing health and safety legislation
Taking the "red tape challenge"
Box 1: Red tape sectors
Your Freedom website closure
In April 2011, we reported on an announcement on 21 March by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that we believed would kick-start the most fundamental changes to health and safety regulation since the HSW Act 1974. The DWP's "new start" built on Lord Young's 2010 report on health and safety, and the alleged compensation culture, and anticipated: a reduction in inspections by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and local authorities totalling 76,000 per year; the HSE charging for more of its activities; and a major review of health and safety legislation.
Ten days after the DWP announcement, the HSE published its Delivery plan (PDF format, 1.28MB) (external website), which essentially sets out the approach that the HSE will pursue over the year to 31 March 2012. Three weeks later, the DWP published the terms of reference for the review of legislation. In this feature, we provide an overview of both developments as well as yet another government attempt to encourage employers and the public to complain about legislation they don't like.
HSE "Delivery plan"
Introducing the "Delivery plan", the HSE's chair, Judith Hackitt, acknowledged that the HSE faces "challenges" as a result of the Young review and the 35% four-year cuts in government funding. But "notwithstanding the very different environment in which we are now operating," she said, the HSE's 2009 strategy, Be part of the solution, "continues to provide the overall strategic framework for maintaining and improving Great Britain's workplace health and safety performance".
To address the "challenges", the "Delivery plan" envisages the HSE:
- making more effective use of its resources "by becoming even more efficient" and focusing "attention on those areas where we can have the most impact. This will mean making some tough choices about priorities";
- recovering more of its costs, "by recognising the value of the experience and material [the] HSE has, and charging for it where there is legitimate scope to do so"; and
- "ensuring that those businesses which create risks by operating outside of the law, or where a continuing high level of engagement is required, meet more of the regulator's costs that are generated as a result."
The "Delivery plan" has been greeted with dismay by the trade unions, anxious to see the HSE show some kind of concern in public, instead of continuing to say nothing that might upset their political masters. Construction union UCATT, for example, was particularly angered by Hackitt's claim that the HSE's "role is to enable innovation that brings economic growth while ensuring that risks are managed properly and proportionately". Pointing out that the HSE had previously seen its role as to "secure the health and safety and welfare of people at work and protect others from risks to health and safety from work activity", George Guy, UCATT's acting general secretary, said that Hackitt needed "to take a reality check".
Effective control of risks
The HSE's "Delivery plan" is divided into four sections, each of which has up to four subsections of up to five parts, some of which have "milestones". Below, we look in detail at the sections on "transforming the HSE's approach" and "ownership of risk". In terms of the other two sections, that on "securing justice" offers little more than an ongoing commitment to investigate in line with the HSE's incident selection criteria and take enforcement action in accordance with the HSE's enforcement management model. Within these constraints - and they are themselves open to flexible interpretation - the section is sufficiently vague to allow the HSE to do pretty much whatever it wants.
The second (somewhat appositely named) section is "avoiding catastrophe", and aims to provide public assurance that there is effective control of risks that have the potential to cause catastrophic harm to workers and the public from high-hazard industries strategically important to the country's economy. This section of the plan comprises mainly ongoing work such as assessments of safety cases, granting of licences, and inspections. It does, however, also encompass a major cross-department review of the UK offshore oil and gas regulatory regime in the light of the Deepwater Horizon incident, which will be completed by September 2011.
Transforming the HSE approach
Of the two sections that we are looking at in more detail, one envisages the HSE "transforming [its] approach" by reforming "how and where" it works "to realise the best achievable impact on the health and safety system, to deliver our functions more efficiently and live within our SR10 [Comprehensive Spending Review] settlement". The transformation involves:
- improving the design, prioritisation, targeting and evaluation of interventions. This covers the HSE's evidence base on injuries and ill health, sector-specific initiatives, and developing, by April 2012, guidance for local authority co-regulators on combining health and safety inspections (as recommended by Young);
- reforming the structure of the HSE to meet future challenges. This will include a review of the Health and Safety Laboratory (July 2011), the new Office for Nuclear Regulation and the HSE's Estates Strategy (ongoing until March 2012), which requires a "more efficient" use (closure, relocation, cheaper rents etc) of its premises and affects at least a dozen HSE area offices;
- improving business processes by removing unnecessary steps, reducing costs and improving efficiency. Of note here is the intention to move the bulk of telephone enquiries from the HSE's InfoLine to an "improved" web-based service (InfoLine will cease in September 2011) and to implement electronic notification of RIDDOR-reportable incidents to the HSE (August 2011); and
- deriving more of the HSE's income from non-government sources. This comprises: recovering more of the HSE's costs arising from interventions where a material breach of the law warrants remedial action (consultation will start in July 2011) and will, argues the HSE, "create a more level playing field for those businesses that comply with the law". The HSE will also extend cost recovery "across a number of high-hazard areas", and "develop initiatives to seek more value from providing HSE's expertise and involvement for those who wish to use it" (the new charging regimes will be implemented in April 2012). These steps were set out in the DWP's "new start".
Ownership of risk
The remaining section, "clarifying ownership of risk and improving compliance", aims to "motivate others in the health and safety system to address their responsibilities in a common-sense and proportionate manner and contribute to improving health and safety performance". This breaks down into seven areas, including:
- simplify regulations to remove duplication, reduce the burden on business and, "as a minimum, maintain the protection of workers and those affected by work activities". This covers changing over-three-day reportable injuries into over-seven-day injuries, replacing the Adventures Activities Licensing Authority with a code of practice (May 2011) and contributing to the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills' Enforcement White Paper on better-coordinated inspection of multisite retail businesses, which was due out in May 2011;
- rationalise and improve access to web-based guidance (particularly for small and low-risk firms), to understand their health and safety obligations. This involves a fundamental review of all types of HSE guidance (publications, tools, webpages etc), with a milestone of 25% of all the HSE's website content and publications portfolio "reviewed, revised and, where appropriate, improved" by October 2011. The review will also encompass revised guidance for homeworkers in low-hazard environments, as recommended by Young (August 2011). Other review areas include RIDDOR, risk and first aid;
- enable access to independent and competent advice through the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register. The HSE is currently administering the register but will have a transition plan in place by December 2011 for handing it over to the professional bodies;
- concentrate proactive inspections in industries and companies that present significant risk and where inspection is an appropriate intervention, for example asbestos, construction, and waste and recycling; and
- "continue to focus on the true role and remit of health and safety and HSE, drawing the distinction between real health and safety risks, which threaten serious harm to people in the workplace, and [hazards that present smaller risks and result in] risk-averse behaviour."
Reviewing health and safety legislation
On 20 April, the DWP published the draft terms of reference (PDF format, 46K) (external website) for the review of health and safety legislation that it has commissioned from Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, director of the King's Centre for Risk Management at King's College, London. The review, advises the DWP, "will consider the opportunities for reducing the burden of health and safety legislation on UK businesses while maintaining the progress made in improving health and safety outcomes". In particular, it will consider:
- the scope for consolidating, simplifying or abolishing regulations;
- whether or not the requirements of EU Directives are being unnecessarily enhanced ("gold-plated") when they are transposed into UK law;
- if lessons can be learned from comparison with health and safety regimes in other countries;
- whether or not there is a clear link between regulation and positive health and safety outcomes;
- if there is evidence of inappropriate litigation and compensation arising from health and safety legislation; and
- whether or not changes to legislation are needed to clarify the legal position of employers in cases where employees act in an irresponsible manner.
Importantly, the review will not look at the HSW Act or the 16 other Acts that are "owned and enforced" by the HSE, although it will consider any comments that are submitted. Instead, it will focus on 200 sets of Regulations that the HSE and local authorities enforce and the associated Approved Codes of Practice. Nor will the review cover Regulations owned and regulated by bodies other than the HSE, for example on fire and product safety, or "other issues that are widely perceived to be health and safety (for example, working time) but not 'owned' by [the] HSE".
Löfstedt will be assisted by an advisory panel that will "provide constructive challenge to the review". The panel will also finalise the draft terms of reference, which have been "agreed in principle" by the employment minister, Chris Grayling. The six-member panel comprises three MPs (from the three major parties), and one member representing each of employers, employees and small businesses. The review will report by autumn 2011.
Taking the "red tape challenge"
Löfstedt will be conducting his review while the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) and the Cabinet Office run their own, more populist, "red tape challenge". Three days before the DWP announced its review, BIS had announced several measures as part of a Growth Review, including a public audit of almost 22,000 statutory instruments. The intention, advises BIS, is to remove "any overly burdensome or unnecessary regulations" unless departments can prove there is a good reason for them.
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The Government's "Red tape challenge" website invites comments on regulations in 10 sectors. Each consultation period ends one day before the next begins:
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The "red tape challenge" (external website) is inviting comments on 10 sectors on a rolling basis: each sector has two weeks in the limelight, except for retail and manufacturing, which have four weeks and one week respectively (see box on the right). Alongside the sector-specific site sits one on "general regulations", which is broken down into six areas, one of which is health and safety (external website). On this site, the Government believes it has listed "all 131 regulations that relate to health and safety" - the DWP claims above there are 200 - and groups them into five areas: major-hazard industries (seven comments as at 2 May); higher-risk workplaces (nine comments); dealing with hazardous chemicals and materials (five comments); general workplace health and safety (86 comments); and fire safety (which, interestingly, is excluded from the Löfstedt review) (26 comments).
As at 2 May, there were also 169 other responses on health and safety legislation, many of which emphasise its importance. Some comments urge the Government to tackle the alleged compensation culture and the insurance industry, and others demand a "lighter touch" for the smallest firms. Many of the comments focus on specific and technical issues that are of particular importance to the complainant but about which little can be done (for example, the types and amounts of chemicals that fall within the EU-wide REACH regime). And some are not even relevant to health and safety.
Your Freedom website closure
Given the DWP's legislative review, it is hard to see the "challenge" as anything more than another PR stunt. It is also evidence of duplication of resources and an absence of "joined-up thinking" across government departments. Recently, for example, the Government quietly closed the Your Freedom website (external website). Launched in July 2010 with considerable fanfare by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, the site allowed businesses and the public to report to the Government "onerous" regulations they believed should be removed or amended. Although some workplace safety legislation was briefly mentioned, the postings failed to offer a credible basis or justification for repeal with, as we previously noted, complaints that were varied - "Repeal usury", based on Deuteronomy 23:19, was one example - and rarely attracting more than a handful of comments.
Howard Fidderman is a freelance journalist and editor of HSB.
