Relocation: The HSE moves northwest

Howard Fidderman reports on concerns that the closure of the HSE’s London HQ will hamper the ability of the regulator to do its job.

On this page:
The move to Bootle
      Not just a matter of money
      Will savings boost the front line?
Few Merseyside movers
      Clueless in Bootle?
      More union concerns
      The experience of others
      How many will go to Bootle?
      Mitigating the move
      No one is irreplaceable
      Recruitment dispute
      Wider staffing concerns
      Recruitment is key
      “Tweaking” won’t work
      Getting older all the time
“Only challenges”
      Box 1: Industrial action
      Box 2: Not the best of times
      Box 3: Offshore problems
      Box 4: Grow your own
      Box 5: Pay and conditions
      Box 6: Diversity issues
      Table 1: Potential HSE vacancies in 2008/09.

Over the next two years, the HSE will relocate approximately 300 posts from its Rose Court offices on London’s South Bank to a single headquarters in Bootle on Merseyside. The move is fraught with difficulties and, currently, only three outcomes seem assured: the move will happen; the HSE will save some money; and the HSE will lose at least 80% of its London HQ staff. The consensus appears to be that there is financial and, eventually, operational sense in having a single headquarters, but that it will prove problematic in the shorter term. The extent of these problems is, however, disputed.

Giving evidence earlier this year to the parliamentary work and pensions select committee inquiry into the HSC and HSE (subsequently merged into a single “HSE”), the chair of the HSC (and now of the HSE), Judith Hackitt, said of the Bootle move and the potential loss of expertise: “To say there is not a risk associated with such a move would clearly be unrealistic.” The HSE, however, was “doing everything that is reasonably possible to mitigate that risk and maintain our ability to do business as usual”¹. The HSE’s chief executive, Geoffrey Podger, added that the HSE was developing plans to ensure “a smooth transition”. In this feature we look at whether “everything possible” will amount to “enough”, particularly against the wider background of the problems that the HSE is experiencing in recruiting and retaining specialist staff.

The move to Bootle

In 2006, the HSE board established the “How and where we work” (HWWW)² programme to “foster more collaborative ways of working, greater flexibility, improve career structures, improve the working environment and reduce the costs of the estate”. The HSE pointed out that it was responsible for more than 30 offices and other facilities amounting to 80,000 cubic metres of space, and the cost of its estate – much of which is “under-utilised” – could rise from 10% (£26.9 million) of its available resources in 2005/06 to 12% by 2011/12: “The imperative for the HSE is to devote as much of its resource as possible to improving standards of health and safety,” the regulator maintained, and it would thus be “irresponsible” if it did not reform its estate.

The HWWW review looked at many different changes, for example the introduction of hot-desking in regional offices and a review of the regional office structure. But by far the most controversial proposal was to dispense with the HSE’s dual headquarters in Bootle and London by closing one – Rose Court – and shifting around 320 posts northwest to a single HQ based in its Redgrave Court building in Bootle. The HSE hopes the move will realise gross savings of between £55 million and £67 million over 10 years. (A memorandum submitted by the Department for Work and Pensions to the select committee in November 2007 noted that “the net result (discounted) is a gain of between £31 million and £43 million”.)

Not just a matter of money

The HSE is keen to emphasise, however, that the move to the North West is not just a matter of money. Following the HSC’s endorsement of the move on 6 November 2007, Judith Hackitt, said: “While there are significant economic gains, the merits of a single HQ are clear in their own right and will help us play our part making workplaces in 21st-century Britain healthier and safer.” Among the advantages are that the move will bring together, for the first time, the HSE’s leadership and the majority of teams covering strategy, policy, operational planning and management, and corporate support. Geoffrey Podger concurred: “This move will improve HSE’s cohesion and efficiency, and create a unified and vibrant headquarters at the heart of a successful national organisation.”

A few months later, in front of the select committee, Podger said: “We see, from a management point of view – leaving the money out of it – a significant benefit in putting the headquarters together in Bootle. In fact, the London end is a very small part; we only have around 300 people we propose to move from London and we have around 1,200 people already in the Bootle headquarters. One of the things that has certainly struck me in the two years I have been in the HSE is that we have not always been as successful as we could have been in actually joining up our policy people, who are predominantly in London, with our delivering forces, which are predominantly run from the Bootle headquarters. We actually see benefit in terms of harnessing the expertise of the HSE from what we are planning to do; but I do accept, as Judith [Hackitt] has said, that we have to be very careful to ensure that we do not lose irreplaceable expertise in the move – and we do have plans to do that.” An HSE paper submitted to the HSE’s senior management team meeting on 2 April³ added that the move offered “an opportunity to reshape the HQ-based workforce, with staff having better career development opportunities”.

Gordon MacDonald, the programme director for HWWW and head of the HSE’s business services division, told HSB that the move should result in a “combination of benefits”: financially, times are hard and it is important to invest as much of the available resources into the HSE’s work as possible; but there are also advantages that will be reaped from collaboration and flexibility between departments. MacDonald added that he would consider moving the HQ even if there were no obvious financial advantage, although the case is “more compelling” with the potential cost reductions.

Will savings boost the front line?

The parliamentary under-secretary of state for health and safety, Lord McKenzie, told the House of Commons select committee that “obviously, any savings that can be made [on the HSE’s estate costs] can help support the front line.” And, while the select committee accepted that the HSE “must make savings in order to release more money to fund frontline services”, its final report also asked that it “clarifies how savings made from the relocation will be reallocated”⁴ . The government’s response, which was published on 20 June⁵, merely confirmed that: “Savings from the relocation and other efficiency projects will be reinvested in supporting the maintenance of the HSE’s frontline work.”

The select committee’s concerns followed evidence from the likes of Mike MacDonald, negotiations officer for Prospect (a union that represents many HSE inspectors and other staff), who claimed “that things have been rushed because of the resource constraints on the HSC” and that he doubted that the savings would find their way into health and safety. “In terms of the issue of costs,” MacDonald told the committee, “the move to Bootle will reduce estate costs. I think one of the problems the HSE has – this is not a criticism of the HSE management – is that [it] has been involved in PFI-type deals for the health and safety labs at Buxton and the new headquarters at Bootle and, basically, the reduction in estate costs in London is to meet the costs of the headquarters. The problem we see is in terms of balancing the books in a time of financial constraint: [the move] is not going to release resources to increase the number of inspectors; it is not going to release resources to employ more policy people; it is not going to release resources to employ more scientists. All this is going to do is release resources to meet the cuts that are being forced upon the HSE at a time when accident and injury rates are not reducing.”

Few Merseyside movers

The most likely scenario at the moment is that no more than 10% of the Rose Court staff will relocate to the North West with their posts. Daniel Shears, health, safety and environmental research and policy officer with the GMB union, told the select committee that he “would be amazed if more than 10% of staff go … [or] if any kind of expertise remains once this manoeuvre has gone through”. Prospect’s MacDonald believes that fewer than 5% of team leaders in the policy section are prepared to move. The current situation, he explained, is “that people are extremely unwilling to move” for a combination of reasons. In terms of work, there are changes within the HSE itself, “vast financial uncertainty about the future”, and “a lot of concern that moving to Bootle would be unwise at a time when the HSE is reducing staff”.

Shears described three main reasons why people are leaving the HSE rather than move to Merseyside, in that Bootle:

• “is really a final move – with property prices being as they are, it is a long-term commitment and many people are not willing to make that commitment”;
• “commits movers to the HSE for probably the rest of their civil service careers, with the loss of the “interchange opportunities” that exist in London”; and
• is to many people “a really regressive step in terms of the relationship that the HSE has with its fellow government departments, and its political influence in terms of lobbying and negotiating with Whitehall and with Europe.”

Clueless in Bootle?

Written evidence to the select committee from the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services (LACORS) said the decision to relocate “appears, from anecdotal evidence … to have had a significant effect on the organisation’s morale”. LACORS is concerned that the move “could lead to a large turnover of staff and a significant loss of experience.” Such a loss, according to Chris Hurley, the HSE branch secretary for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents many HSE administrative staff and is currently balloting on industrial action (see box 1), “will devastate the organisation. It is time for management to think again before it is too late.”

Mike MacDonald voiced similar concerns, telling the select committee that the HSE risked losing the “large amount of expertise contained in the heads of the people who are currently based in London, particularly in the policy area”. The HSE, he said, needed “to have a robust structure so inspectors can move into policy and vice versa, so the policy functions of the HSE are based on practical, professional experience”. In short, “there is a strong danger that the HSE will lose a large amount of professional expertise which is key to maintaining health and safety in Great Britain.” The staff drain, he said, would arise in three ways:

• moves to other government departments;
• moves into the “robust market for people with expertise in the private sector”; and
• “with the age profile, many of these highly experienced people will simply retire early and their expertise will be lost to the country as a whole.”

Written evidence from the TUC to the House of Commons select committee claimed that the closure of the London office would have “a devastating effect on the ability of the HSE to operate”. The GMB, said Shears, believes the TUC “really [does] see this as having a significant negative impact on the performance and efficiency of the HSE”. He called the move a “somewhat unjustified decision” because of the “real risk” of “key policymakers being lost to both the organisation and perhaps to the civil service”.

More union concerns

Daniel Shears added that less appreciated “is the impact that this will have on wider movements within the HSE” and the “important” and “quite symbiotic” relationship between policy makers and inspectors. London, he explained, has traditionally been a “hub” of staff movement within the HSE: “New posts are created, new vacancies need to be filled, people willing to change offices in perhaps the South East, the Midlands, the South West, to fill those vacancies. It ensures that people are retained in the organisation because they have promotion opportunities; they get career development opportunities and that is all London-centric. When those opportunities are taken away and moved to the North West there is a very fair chance that most of the staff in the Midlands and the South will not take those opportunities up because of the commuting or relocation. We think there is a real risk here that not only will staff in London be impacted, but also staff outside of London, and overall retention will be lost as a result.”

According to the FDA – a union representing some of the HSE’s senior managers, lawyers and statisticians – relocating will result in “the loss of virtually all the HSE’s policy and litigation legal staff within two years”. The FDA also points out that, more generally, the HSE has lost more than a quarter of its staff in the past five years and is likely to lose more as a result of further resource constraints. While it acknowledges “that in the present financial climate there is great pressure on the HSE to make savings by transferring staff out of London”, the FDA is “concerned that the costs in terms of the loss of experienced, competent staff and the consequent loss of business continuity, have not been taken fully into account”.

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) puts the losses that will arise from the move to Bootle within the wider context of the current mood at the HSE (see box 2), arguing that: “For a body that is struggling to keep its staff and to recruit new ones, the HSE’s move from London to Bootle could not have come at a worse time … It is fair to say that the programme is one reason, combined with other factors, why morale at the executive is extremely low and why staff are leaving in droves, particularly from London.”

The House of Commons select committee concluded that it was “concerned that the relocation to Bootle could lead to a significant loss of experienced staff. We are not satisfied that the HSE has explained how it will ensure that the closure of its London headquarters will not create a gap in its expertise, particularly in the areas of policy and litigation.” And, on 2 April, the HSE’s senior management team “agreed that despite best efforts the HSE is likely to be significantly under-staffed in the short term due to the effects of HWWW”.

The experience of others

As part of its preparation for the move, Gordon MacDonald says that the HSE consulted 18 other government offices that had moved away – partly or fully – from London. These included the Met Office, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, the Department of Health and the Environment Agency. The HSE wanted to benchmark how they had handled relocation and redeployment, and found that “strong themes” came out. These included the need for strong leadership, open communication, and creating and maintaining momentum. The “headline news”, says MacDonald, is that “there are real risks, but they can be managed, and organisations can be stronger for the long term at the end of the process.”

This view is not without opponents, however. Daniel Shears, for example, is quick to point out that most government bodies that have left London - such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) - do not have the same policy-making function as the HSE, and will therefore not experience the same difficulties.

How many will go to Bootle?

As at the end of June, only 12 Rose Court staff (4%) had said they are prepared to move to Bootle, with a further 20 indicating that they might (or might not) be interested. The experience of other government departments, Gordon MacDonald says, is that the numbers will increase as the “end points” approach. Lord McKenzie told the House of Commons select committee that the ONS’s move “suggests that the numbers that are initially declared might double”. Nor is the HSE surprised at the total: Podger told the committee: “We have always anticipated that low numbers” would wish to relocate to the North West. This, he said, should not be the “reason for not moving out of London”.

The PCS claims that of the 320 staff initially “in scope for the move”, almost 80 have left, meaning that the HSE “will lose the competence, knowledge and know-how of [up to] a further [240] staff over the next two years. So far, only 28 staff have been recruited in Bootle.” MacDonald says that the PCS’s estimate that around 240–250 staff will leave the HSE as a result of the move is “not wide of the mark” given how many takers there have been to date. He stresses, however, that there will be no net loss of staff, with the numbers that are deployed into operations or policy in the longer term being determined by the requirements of the new health and safety strategy, which will be published later this year.

Mitigating the move

One helpful factor for the HSE during the move is its ability to be flexible and pragmatic. Exactly when people move north will, says Gordon MacDonald, be “a mixture of the art of the possible and what is desirable”. Geoffrey Podger told the select committee: “Basically, we are in the position that we will be able, as it were, to balance our recruitment in Merseyside against the losses in London over the period of time we can define. In other words, we do not have to finish the whole thing by a particular period: if we discover there is a particular skills set that we cannot readily recruit in Merseyside, we are able to retain that skills set in London until we have managed to find a substitute in Merseyside. That simply relate[s] to the fact that we [have] the lease on the building in London, which enables us to do this.” (This optimism, of course, assumes that the person with the skills remains in post in London, whereas the reality is that individuals will leave when alternative employment arises.)

This pragmatism has already resulted in a slight reduction in the number of posts moving to Bootle. MacDonald says that while trying to pin down a precise number is difficult in a “shifting sands” environment, the total will be nearer to 280–285 posts, rather than the 320 originally posited. The total includes around 190 policy staff, as well as staff from divisions such as corporate science and analytical, resources and planning, nuclear directorate and communications. MacDonald maintains that the main reason for the revised estimates is that 22 hazardous installations directorate (HID) staff currently based at Rose Court will instead move to satellite offices in the South East, and not to Bootle as originally planned. The reason for this is simple: “We need the HID specialists and they were not up for relocation,” says MacDonald, adding that they are also of a “certain age” and, as they retire, the HSE will replace them in its preferred locations, including Bootle, Aberdeen and Norwich.

Among staff staying in London (most likely at Rose Court), MacDonald says, are:

• the construction policy team, who will be near their operational colleagues;
• a policy team of about 20, which will undertake key face-to-face and immediate work, particularly dealing with larger government departments, for example on the Better Regulation agenda in the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; and
• nine advisory lawyers, who deal with policy work. (The litigation lawyers, who deal with prosecutions, are moving to Bootle.)

Prospect’s Mike MacDonald told the House of Commons select committee that a transfer could be done “cautiously” and “over a period of time … so long as key parts of the HSE remain in London; it needs to be done on a case-by-case basis for each section.” Parliamentary liaison is one function MacDonald would expect to stay in London. The process, he believes, needs to be negotiated in a “measured way”. One “upside”, he says, “is construction policy staying in London, which is a step forward in construction, but we need some certainty because clearly [for] the people who see some salvation in that their jobs remain, there is then the question of whether this is a long-term decision or a short-term decision.”

Podger also envisages older staff playing a role over the next two years: “We will have a number of particularly experienced staff in London who are in any case approaching retirement age and they will be particularly helpful, if they want to do so – and the indications are that they will – in actually providing the levels of continuity in London that may enable them to work that much longer until the end of the period, which they will see as in their personal interest as well as the interests of HSE. We do see ways of actually providing a permanency of senior staff over that period; we will have people who actually are essentially thinking about when they want to retire and have already indicated to us that they would like to stay on that much longer as that suits their personal plans, and it will also suit us.”

No one is irreplaceable

The HSE, however, disputes the true impact of the loss of the 250 or so individuals. Lord McKenzie told the select committee that “as I understand it, a lot of the skills that we have at headquarters are generalist in nature. They are good-quality skills but they are not in their entirety highly specialised and in any way unique. I think it is right to say that pretty much all of the tasks that are done in London are also done somewhere else in some measure outside of London … I think that we should also recognise that the sort of skills that we are looking [for] when we may have to be replacing people who do not wish to move are going to be available in the northwest region. Again, the assumption that these skills can somehow only be found in London is not something that I would accept or indeed evidence on recruitment so far is indicating to be the case.” Podger added: “We should not ignore the extent to which … (a) we can actually recruit directly into an agency in the North West or (b) the extent to which colleagues already in Bootle which, as you know, is a major part of our organisation, are actually well able to move over into the vacancies.”

Recruitment dispute

There is also considerable disagreement over the HSE’s ability to recruit staff in Bootle. A recent HSE recruitment exercise there for policy and delivery managers, as part of the attempt to build capacity, yielded 20 successful candidates from 220 applicants. “On this basis,” the PCS told the select committee, “it will take another 15 similar exercises to replace the number of staff leaving the HSE. Even with three such exercises a year, with a staff turnover of only 10%, it will take six years to rebuild [the] policy group, just in numerical terms.” The PCS, while in “no doubt” that the posts will eventually be filled, believes that “the current timetable for the move is in our opinion unrealistic.” Likewise, the CIEH points out that in the past 12 months, the HSE has lost 228 staff and managed to recruit just 37.

The CIEH adds: “The HSE has little hope of recruiting the 400 new staff it estimates it will need next year. If the current low morale and escalating flight of policy specialists and frontline inspectors continues, health and safety will undoubtedly be compromised.” Gordon MacDonald, however, told HSB that the indications for recruitment in Bootle are “good”: already the HSE has appointed three litigation lawyers to Bootle – a recruitment exercise that proved successful there in a way that it had not been in London.

Geoffrey Podger’s report to the HSE’s executive board meeting on 28 May⁶ noted that the HSE’s directorates had “developed transition plans setting out the timescales for the move of posts and the business delivery risks and mitigations. Podger added that: “A recruitment plan to staff up to the numbers needed to deliver essential policy functions is being developed. When the new requirements of the health and safety strategy emerge, these plans will be reviewed to ensure we have the necessary delivery capability.”

“An early-release scheme for staff who might find it difficult to redeploy to another government department has been issued,” Podger advised. “A panel of senior managers will consider the merits of these applications in July. Agreement has been reached with the Department for Work and Pensions about access to funds to support staff leaving the HSE on such schemes.”

Wider staffing concerns

The move to Bootle comes at a time when the HSE is facing severe difficulties in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of appropriately qualified staff, which is a problem throughout the organisation (see box 3). In the paper considered by the HSE’s senior management team in April (see above), the HSE notes that labour market forecasts “all seem to point in the same direction. It is going to become increasingly difficult over the next five to 10 years to attract many of the types of specialist that the HSE has traditionally recruited.” (The HSE advises that the term “specialist” covers inspectors, scientists and other professionals such as accountants and economists.)

The paper proposes addressing several areas during 2008, including:

• increased recruitment needs for a wide range of specialists across the HSE and “increased turnover and an increasing age profile with potentially significant numbers of staff retiring over the next three years”;
• the impact of HWWW on all directorates/divisions (D/Ds) in Bootle;
• the deployment of staff and jobs more effectively;
• reviewing the corporate learning and development arrangements (see box 4); and
• capacity at the centre and in D/Ds to support current and future recruitment, and learning and development activity.

“The challenge,” explains the paper, “is how to respond effectively to these overlapping issues. If staff shortages in certain areas are not addressed, then business delivery could be compromised and it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the ‘red line’ of 1,283 inspectors.” As at 1 May the HSE had 1,273 inspectors in post, and told HSB that: “It has always been understood that we would look to achieve the target once HSE’s settlement was known. Our recent recruitment drive followed the settlement.” (The HSE’s three-year settlement from the 2007 comprehensive spending review represents up to £724 million, including a maximum of £10 million exit funding for the transfer to Bootle.)

Recruitment is key

Recruitment, states the HSE paper, is the main issue facing the HSE – “in particular, protecting the numbers of frontline inspectors”. Although the HSE has been “reasonably successful in recruiting generalists, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit specialists”. The HSE told HSB that: “Many employers in the UK and abroad face problems in recruiting professional-level specialists. In particular, there are widespread shortages of many types of engineering specialists.”

At its April meeting the HSE’s senior management team agreed that the HSE should recruit in anticipation of staff leaving over the next 12 months, and that human resources (HR) and its divisions and directorates should draw up a list of the top recruitment priorities for the organisation. The team also agreed that there was a need “to be selective about the posts that will be filled while ensuring there are sufficient staff to deliver critical business work and objectives”. Overall, however, the team “concluded that it will be difficult to deliver the workforce strategy and that it will take time to put in place the right measures to recruit staff”.

Between now and March 2009, the HSE estimates that up to 421 external recruits could be required (see table 1). To put this in perspective, only 37 specialists were recruited in the 50 weeks to 14 March – a “relatively modest number”, admits the HSE, which nonetheless “required considerable effort from D/Ds and HR”. Of 150 candidates for specialist vacancies in the field operations and hazardous installations directorates (FOD and HID), only four were recruited. The HSE subsequently told HSB that the total of 37 “specialists” actually included non-specialists (five administrative staff and 19 policy advisers), but that it should also have included 44 trainee inspectors (including six internal candidates), who started in April 2008 but were recruited during 2007/08. And, in the final weeks of March, there were five more “starts” (two lawyers, one administrator, one specialist and one policy adviser), meaning that the final end-of-year total was 86 starts (excluding the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL)).

“Tweaking” won’t work

The HSE’s HR department believes that “tweaking the [recruitment] process will not get the numbers required” and that, as a result, the HSE needs “to make significant changes” to how it recruits, including considering “alternative ways to source the skills that the HSE needs”.

The HR department notes, too, that engaging recruitment specialists would cost 15%–20% of each starter’s first year’s salary, as well as £50,000 to revise its recruitment processes, equating (at a salary of £40,000) to £400,000 to recruit 50 specialists in areas of greatest need. A further £400,000–£500,000 would be needed to allow “dual running” (based on a year’s overlap of 50 outgoing and 50 incoming staff ), which would allow business continuity and skills, and knowledge transfer.

In what may be a silver lining to the cloud hanging over the Bootle move, the paper states that there are “location issues” in that it has always been more difficult to recruit specialists in London, the South East and Aberdeen, and that “it is becoming even more difficult”. There is, says the HSE, “the emergence of a North–South divide in the availability of specialists”. The HSE told HSB that the move to Bootle “may help in recruiting certain types of staff, such as policy advisers, but most of our specialists are already based in Bootle or our frontline offices, and these posts will not be relocated”.

Getting older all the time

The rising rate of staff turnover within the HSE has now reached 7.3%, compared with 6.2% a year ago. Turnover within departments ranges from 31.5% to 1.3%: the CIEH claims that the rate of loss in some departments “is catastrophic – almost a third of the legal adviser’s office left last year and a fifth of the local authority unit and communications teams”. The HSE points out, however, that the overall numbers of leavers in some of the smaller departments is low.

In FOD, which accounts for 96 of the 227.7 full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff who left between 1 April 2007 and 14 March 2008, turnover is also at 7.3%. Staff leave the HSE for three main reasons: resignations (101.9 FTE); retirement (60.6); and transfers to other government departments (OGDs) (43.5). The number of resignations has increased slightly over the past 12 months and, of the OGD transfers, 34 were within London, which, states the HSE, “we assume is largely is due to HWWW”. The number transferring since November 2007 is 30 (seven of whom were promotions). Administration accounts for most leavers (111 of 228), but 49.8 FTE regulatory specialists also left in the 50-week period, including 23 from FOD.

The paper accepts that there is “increasing concern about the age profile”: nearly 100 staff could retire each year for the next three years (the HSE expects around half of 2008/09’s complement of 90 to do so), with disciplines comprising small numbers of specialists “particularly at risk”. Of 36 disciplines within the HSE, 17 have at least one-fifth of staff who are 57 or over; in four disciplines - professional and technical, offshore wells, mines and psychologists – more than half the staff are aged 57 or over, while at least one-third of staff in four other disciplines are also aged 57 or over.

“The main concern about future retirements,” the HSE paper acknowledges, “is that there will be a loss of corporate knowledge and memory and insufficient training of recruits (if they can be found) … In some topic areas, the HSE’s corporate knowledge could be lost when a single individual retires.” The HSE adds, however, that retirement “is also seen as an opportunity to refresh the culture of the organisation”.

To improve retention, the HSE is looking at the benefits it offers to staff (see box 5). It notes that in the past it has been able to attract older specialists (who would be interested in benefits around pension and health provision). But the paper emphasises that the HSE needs to “rethink” its recruitment strategy because “taking on younger specialists may be the only way to recruit in some areas and would help us to build a healthier age profile, [members of which] may be interested in different benefits.”

“ONLY CHALLENGES”

The controversy about the move to Bootle arises not from the need for a single headquarters, about which there is little dispute, but from the decision to locate it in Merseyside. Daniel Shears, for example, told the select committee that the GMB supported a move to a single HQ on strategic grounds. The issue, he said, lay in the fact that “we very much saw that being a move to London as opposed to Bootle.” Like Mike MacDonald, he stressed that this was not about Bootle “in broad terms … [but just] a move away from London”.

The decision to relocate, however, is unlikely to be reversed: indeed, as we have seen, the relocation is beginning to happen, with several new recruits on Merseyside. There is even agreement about the loss of significant numbers of experienced staff and the other potential risks: the HSE’s original business case, for example, accepted that the “risks include reduced visibility and influence in Whitehall, less influence with London-based stakeholders and the loss of skilled staff who may choose not to move to the North West. It may also be more difficult in the North West for the HSE to build an organisation to reflect the diverse community it serves” (see box 6).

The issues now revolve around the pace of the change, which posts that are to remain in London, and the transitional arrangements that will keep the immediate damage to a minimum. At its April meeting, the HSE’s senior management team agreed that “the build-up of policy advisers and other staff in Redgrave Court [Bootle] should be managed over a longer timescale.” It also asked the HR department to provide its July meeting with a recruitment progress report.

Gordon MacDonald anticipates two “end points” for completion of the move from Rose Court: no earlier than September 2009 and no later than March 2010. The actual date for completion will depend on the property situation, business continuity and staff redeployment. He emphasises that there is a need to separate out the transitional arrangements from the final benefits. He does not think any division will suffer once things have settled down. Indeed, he believes the organisation will be “stronger, with policy and operations staff working hand in glove to deliver effective interventions”. There will be some things that will need to be done differently: engagements with stakeholders will have to be planned because they will not happen opportunistically, although MacDonald does not think that this is necessarily a bad thing. “There will,” he believes, “be no losers, only challenges.”

1. House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee (2 April 2008), “The role of the HSC and the HSE in workplace health and safety” (external website), third report of session 2007–08, vol. II (oral and written evidence), HC 246-II.

2. HSE (2007), “Outline business case for the HWWW programme” (external website) ; and HSE (2007), “HSE Board – HWWW”, HSE/07/34 (external website).

3. HSE (2 April 2008), “Workforce strategy 2008 to 2011”, HSE senior management team paper, SMT/08/02 (external website).

4. House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee (2 April 2008), “The role of the HSC and the HSE in regulating workplace health and safety”, (external website) third report of session 2007–08, vol. I (report), HC 246.

5. “The role of the HSC and HSE in regulating workplace health and safety: government response to the committee’s third report of session 2007–08” (PDF format, 183K) (external website), HC 837.

6. HSE/08/23 (external website).

Howard Fidderman is a freelance journalist and editor of HSB.

Box 1: Industrial action On 28 April, members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union held a one-day strike against the HSE’s move to Bootle, and the union’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, presented a petition to Geoffrey Podger, the HSE chair, urging him to think again about the decision. The PCS is currently collecting signatures for a second petition, to the secretary of state for work and pensions, James Purnell: as at 13 July, 517 people had signed up1. Podger told the HSE’s executive board on 18 June that the PCS would shortly announce the results of a ballot on industrial action short of a strike. He said that, while he recognised the valuable contribution of the PCS members, he thought the HSE would be able to cope with any action that might be taken. The action ballot was supported by 73% of the PCS’s HSE members who voted. 1. PCS petition. The closing date is 30 September 2008.

Box 2: Not the best of times There is rarely an opportune moment for any employer to relocate its staff, and 2008 is no exception for the HSE. At a time when its policy staff are juggling with the government’s Better Regulation agenda in a political climate wary of imposing “burdens” on business, there is now increasing pessimism about the chances of stakeholders securing the Revitalising targets for reducing work-related ill health and absence by 2009/10. Add in an increasingly cash-strapped HSE – even if the budget for the next three years is not as bad as initially feared – and the obsession of politicians and the media with taking cheap shots at an allegedly “over-zealous” health and safety culture, and the wider outlook is less favourable for the HSE than at any point since the Labour government took office in 1997. The regulator has also managed to lose both of its deputy chief executives since Christmas and is now, in its unitary HSE incarnation with a new executive board and relatively new chair, looking at a new strategy.

Box 3: Offshore problems Recruitment and retention difficulties are not just a matter of resources. For example, the head of the HSE’s offshore division, Ian Whewell, says that although his division is “well-resourced compared with other parts of the HSE”, it still has “considerable challenges with recruiting and retaining staff”. And, with the 20th anniversary of the Piper Alpha explosion upon us, there is no need for a clearer demonstration of the link between staffing and accidents: attributing some of the blame for the disaster to the then Department of Energy (which was responsible for both production and safety offshore), Lord Cullen’s report on the 167 Piper Alpha deaths said that “persistent undermanning had affected not only the frequency but also the depth of [the department’s] inspections”.

Box 4: Grow your own As part of its attempts to address the shortfall in specialists, the HSE is running a “grow your own” chartered specialist programme. There are currently five staff on the programme, and the HSE’s April paper on its workforce strategy suggests exploring the possibility of directorates growing their own specialists, not necessarily all to chartered status. The HSE advises, however, that it will need corporate support to extend the programme. At its meeting on 2 April, the HSE’s senior management team “agreed not to over-rely” on the initiative, and to consider other actions, for example establishing links with universities. The HSE’s April paper on its workforce strategy advises that there are concerns that the HSE’s five-year “early years” training model for inspectors will not be able to cope with the anticipated numbers of new staff, and that technical training will need to be extended too. The HSE subsequently told HSB that the HSE “will be able to provide the extra technical training and early years training required. We are mindful of the potential extra load on the system though, and want to take steps to minimise it wherever possible.” One aspect under consideration is whether the HSE should “accept more people below chartered status”; another is recruiting more specialists at band 2, and “possibly recruiting people with relevant qualifications and experience to be general inspectors at band 3”. At its 2 April meeting, the HSE’s senior management team decided that the human resources department should consult divisions and directorates about running a band 2 Bootle career review group.

Box 5: Pay and conditions The HSE’s April paper on its workforce strategy asks “whether the overall banding structure is still fit for purpose, particularly in attracting, retaining and developing specialists”. Other problems include the sufficiency of current pay ranges for attracting staff, an insufficient range of career options to recruit and retain younger staff, and different pay levels within the HSE that encourage staff to transfer to higher-paid disciplines, causing skill shortages in the areas they leave. The HSE believes that solving some of these problems is a longer-term issue, but some progress can be made more rapidly in starting pay and career options. While “it is true that the HSE cannot match the salary rates in some industrial sectors”, the HSE told HSB, “we instead seek to compete on the quality of the jobs and career opportunities in the HSE, and by offering attractive terms and conditions of employment”.

Box 6: Diversity issues The HSE’s relocation to Bootle raises questions around diversity issues. An HSE paper for its diversity seminar on 9 October 20071 advised: “A key current priority is the equality impact of proposals to relocate posts from Rose Court to Redgrave Court.” The paper noted that the regional workforce in the North West has a different profile from that in London, and that a move would mean there is “likely to be a reduction in the representation of BME [black and minority ethnic] staff” and would have an impact on the HSE’s ability to maintain progress towards diversity targets. It therefore proposed working with others, including local authorities, to ensure that the HSE “of the future is as diverse as possible”. The HSE’s equality-impact assessment had identified that it would have to give more support to staff in underrepresented groups, and the HSE incorporated this into the support packages. A current consultation on the HSE’s equality-scheme framework includes its “Race equality action plan 2008 to 2011”, which contains an action point on the relocation. MISC/07/16, www.hse.gov.uk (external website).

Table 1: Potential HSE vacancies in 2008/09
Directorates/divisions (D/Ds)	Posts to be advertised1	Planned staff @ 1 April 2008	Disciplines
Field Operations Directorate (FOD)	34	1164.5	Head of division, chief medical inspector, trainee inspectors, administration
Corporate Specialist Division (CSD)	9	163.0	Medical inspectors, radiation specialist, process safety, psychologist, occupational hygienists
Chief Scientific Adviser’s Group (CSAG)	7	71.2	Head of analytical services, economists, social researchers, statisticians
Hazardous Installations Directorate (HID)	50	517.5	Wells, offshore regulatory, human factors, diving inspector, process safety, structural engineers, pipelines specialist, mines, biological agents, process safety, mechanical engineering
Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL)	75	360.5	Scientists and other disciplines
Nuclear Directorate (ND)	46	295.1	Nuclear specialists, nuclear security inspectors, fire surveyors
Policy Group (PG)	200	295.1	Policy advisers
Total2	421	2,866.9
1.  “Posts to be advertised” in the second column covers current vacancies, future anticipated vacancies (expected retirements) and the staffing up of posts as they transfer from London to Bootle (full-time equivalents). 2. The total in the third column covers the start of the financial year planned staffing levels for those directorates/divisions that had identified future recruitment needs in April. The overall HSE planned staffing level was 3,224. Source: HSE SM0802, with additional information kindly supplied by the HSE.