HSC heralds health and safety shake-up

The UK's health and safety system will undergo its most radical reform in 30 years if new HSC proposals are implemented.

The HSC's plans would see:

  • fundamental changes to how and where the HSE and local authorities (LAs) enforce;

  • the use of independent organisations to provide advice traditionally given by the HSE; and

  • the HSC/E accelerate their priority-shift from safety to health.

    The HSC's proposals, which are published as a strategy document,1 reflect the analysis of 250 responses to a summer HSE consultation exercise. In general, respondents agreed what the problems were, but not what should be done. "Currently", the HSC admits, "there is no coherent direction to the overall health and safety system."

    Independent advice

    The HSC believes that many firms are "scared" of being the subject of action by the enforcing authorities. The strategy document suggests that: "This fear motivates them to seek help but there is nowhere they are happy to go to get it." The problem is particularly acute among "hard-to-reach groups", such as non-unionised workers and smaller firms. Many of these groups would prefer advice to written guidance, particularly where it is long and complex.

    The HSE plans to "move away from the automatic presumption of producing general written guidance towards specific, targeted support and advice directed to the areas of greatest need". Much of this advice will no longer be produced or distributed by the HSE because stakeholders have told the HSC that it needs to separate enforcement from advice. Discussions with HSE staff also showed support for "providing a support and advice service that is perceived as independent from the regulator". Trade associations, in particular, will be expected to fill the gap by communicating industry-specific advice and promoting common standards.

    This disenfranchisement of parts of the economy throws up a further intriguing development. Many in industry, acknowledges the HSC, perceive the HSE as a body that talks to experts in large organisations and devises its approach accordingly. While experts are comfortable with a system based on goal-setting standards - a premise of the UK's safety regime - there may be "a cadre of business that responds better to a level of prescription". If this is so, the HSC says it should "not shy away from degrees of prescription where that serves a real need for business".

    Enforcement revamp

    A central issue for the HSC is that while these hard-to-reach groups want independent advice rather than HSE guidance, fear of enforcement remains their "prime motivator". (The fear of being sued is also "prominent".) Given the problem of "finite resources" - HSC-speak for chronic underfunding - the HSE has "rethought" its arrangements with LAs and come up with a radical restructuring of enforcement activity. This accepts - somewhat belatedly - that "there is no lasting logic to the current division of enforcement responsibilities" between LAs (mainly service sector) and the HSE (the remainder). The arrangements, it adds, "are complex, confusing and based on boundaries that have no relevance in the modern business world".

    The HSC proposes a new partnership that "would be based on an understanding of the value of local versus central interventions, with coherence to both approaches". In practice, this would subject priority sectors and some large firms to a coordinated national approach directed through HSE-led programmes. The remaining sectors "and all of the issues within them" would be addressed by local, joint decision-making and joint HSE-LA action.

    Alongside this change, HSC chair Bill Callaghan says that the new strategy recognises that the HSE and LAs "cannot do it all. . . Some things they do now will need to be done differently (or not at all) in the future."

    In practice, the HSE will: reduce activities in areas where it has least effect; not intervene where risk management is assured; and concentrate on areas directly related to work. There will be a "determined move away from areas that are better regulated by others or other means - including civil law" or where the HSW Act has been used in the absence of other legislation. The strategy also envisages the insurance industry as "an active partner in regulating business risks" through greater involvement and by promoting financial incentives.

    The shift to health

    Accompanying an increasing emphasis on health issues, the HSC accepts that its "traditional interventions are less effective when dealing with health". In particular, the strategy expects the development outside of the HSE of advice and support on preventing ill health, rehabilitation and expediting the return of people to work.

    Elsewhere, much of the draft strategy repeats the detail of the first consultation document, albeit amidst a raft of "management speak" - the HSE, for example, is going to "own the vision" of the UK's health and safety system. The five main "opportunities and threats" - responding to a changing economy, health issues, public protection and security, local authorities and managing the business - are now the "five big strategic issues", but are otherwise unchanged, as are the new and existing HSC "aims".

    Consultation on the strategy closes on 1 December. The HSC will submit a final version to ministers by 31 December and develop a business plan for consultation in 2004.

    1"A strategy for workplace health and safety in Great Britain to 2010 and beyond", HSE Books, free. Comments to: www.hse.gov.uk/consult/condocs/feedback.htm.