The new HSE strategy: three-month consultation is launched

After months of tantalising tasters, the HSE has finally unveiled a draft version of its new strategy for the “health and safety of Great Britain”. Howard Fidderman reports.

On this page:
The case for a new approach
The whole system
Better targeting
The value of safety reps
Helping SMEs
A triumph of intent?
Box 1: The strategic goals
Box 2: Resourcing enforcement
Box 3: Leadership and trivialities.

The HSE launched a three-month consultation¹ on the draft on 3 December at three events in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff, and was planning to invite stakeholders to give their views and “pledge their support” for the strategy’s delivery at seven regional workshops in January 2009. Formal launch of the finalised strategy is planned for the second quarter of 2009, when it will replace the current strategy, which was launched in 2004 to cover the years to “2010 and beyond”.

The HSE claims that its draft new strategy “is resetting the direction” for occupational safety and health (OSH), with 10 strategic goals that are “founded in common sense and practicality” (see box 1). The HSE distils the goals into four main aims:

• to reduce the number of work-related injuries and cases of ill health;
• to gain widespread commitment and recognition of what real health and safety is about;
• to motivate all those involved in the OSH system to contribute to improved OSH performance; and
• to ensure that those who fail in their OSH duties are held to account.

The case for a new approach

The HSE emphasises that its draft strategy must be seen against a background of continuing improvement for most of the past 33 years since the HSW Act came into force, to the point where Britain enjoys one of the best safety records within the EU (although its record on health is more questionable). Nevertheless, there are no laurels to be rested on, with 2007/08 witnessing 137,000 workers seriously injured and 2.1 million people claiming to suffer from work-related ill health - adding up to 34 million lost working days over the year at a cost of £4 billion (or 3% of GDP).

In her foreword to the document the HSE’s chair, Judith Hackitt, justifies the need for a new strategy thus:

• the rate of improvement in OSH performance has slowed and momentum needs to be regained - later in the strategy itself, progress is more starkly described as having stalled around 2003 - “the disturbing fact is that Great Britain’s health and safety performance has stopped improving”;
• there are many more small businesses, as well as new risks from new sectors;
• there are many more workplaces with non-unionised workforces, meaning that the HSE needs to find new ways to engage workers;
• “health and safety is being used increasingly as a synonym for unnecessary bureaucracy and an excuse for not doing things. It is time for us to regain the value of the brand for genuine health and safety - and not trivia”; and
• there are still organisations that “need help to understand that the benefits of implementing a commonsense and practical health and safety regime are improved productivity, increased workforce commitment and enhanced reputation - not exemption from scrutiny by the regulator”.

Hackitt also told HSB subsequently that the 2004 strategy, while a success overall, had failed sufficiently to engage enough “other people”; its messages had not permeated through organisations and there was a need for more industry sectors to become involved. The HSE and local authorities (LAs), she insists, “cannot do this alone. This is why we are seeking support and involvement from everyone to become part of the solution.”

The whole system

This welcome desire to be inclusive - and presumably to share the blame if the strategy fails to deliver - is evident in the title: " The health and safety of Great Britain: be part of the solution", and in the HSE’s insistence that the strategy applies to “the health and safety system as a whole”. The “whole” applies throughout the commercial, statutory, voluntary and third sectors and covers not just the regulators but also employers, workers, safety practitioners and other professionals, and their representative bodies; manufacturers and suppliers; campaigners; and the government. Nevertheless, Hackitt reminds stakeholders that the overriding responsibility lies, as it always has, with those who create the risks and not with the HSE.

While acknowledging the importance of the partnership between the HSE and LAs, the strategy mentions “other roles which can and should be taken on by others”. In particular, third parties and “representative organisations are in a position to play a key role in driving health and safety improvements”. The HSE is also clear that OSH “does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. It is not a discrete entity and so [OSH] priorities cannot be delivered in isolation from other issues that impact on or overlap with them.” There is, it states, “an acknowledged need for balance in managing the interfaces between [OSH] and other law and also between the HSE and other regulators. Crucially, regulation must be a benefit to those it seeks to protect, not a disproportionate burden on those who have to comply with it.”

Better targeting

The draft strategy restates the HSE’s belief that it has to target its resources where it can get the best returns - in effect, on its core activities. In terms of occupational health, this means targeting key health issues and working with those bodies best placed to reduce the ill-health toll. The draft strategy also appears to rein in the potential role of the workplace and the HSE in addressing wider health issues, with Hackitt emphasising that the role of the HSE is prevention, not rehabilitation. “Collaboration,” advises the HSE, “is required to establish who should deal with specific issues.”

Hackitt’s views follow the comments of the HSE’s chief executive, Geoffrey Podger, who told a LexisNexis conference in autumn 2008²: “One thing I think that is very clear is that we in the HSE have been rather ambitious in trying to intervene in issues relating to work-related ill health. While there’s clearly much we can do in relation to issues which have their specific origin in the workplace, as you can well understand there are many issues which are extremely difficult to disentangle, for instance as to whether stress [-related conditions] are really of workplace origin or whether they are linked to people’s domestic or personal circumstances or, as many of us know, to some combination of the two.”

The draft strategy appears implicitly to question the wisdom of two of the three 10-year Revitalising health and safety targets on injury, ill-health and absence that the HSE and stakeholders are charged with securing by 2009/10 (see HSE shows signs of meeting ill-health Revitalising targets). The HSE notes that the setting of targets with regard to ill health is “complex” because of the long latencies involved and the role of non-work-related factors. Hackitt questions the reasonableness of the third target - a reduction in the number of days lost to the economy as a result of work-related injuries and ill health - and indeed whether it is possible to measure progress accurately. Podger previously went still further when he said: “It may be because I spent nearly 15 years working in the Department of Health, but I have to say I don’t regard self-declared views as to people being (a) ill and (b) that it was attributable to work as a very sound basis for determining policy. So I think we have to recognise this is an area where the statistical base is rather dubious, that there are genuine difficulties in distinguishing the categories of ill health that people suffer from and we have to recognise that there are areas where the HSE may not be the best player to intervene.” Acknowledging Podger’s concerns, Hackitt insists the HSE will work harder to establish the true causes of ill health.

In terms of more traditional safety, the strategy advises that the HSE will set priorities, and identify activities within those priorities, that can “deliver a significant reduction in the rate and number of deaths and accidents”. At first sight, this seems little more than what the HSE is already doing. But read on and there is an implicit admission that the HSE will move away from large-scale initiatives such as Fit 3 - where some inspectors claimed that inspecting against national priorities and targets had little relevance to their localities - to more targeted and localised work.

The starting point, advises the HSE, is to create a risk profile identifying which groups of workers are most at risk, and the scale and incidence of negative outcomes. This will allow the setting of priorities and the targeting of resources and expertise. Also, there is a need to find “new ways of tackling old problems” in sectors that have higher-than-average injuries and with emerging sectors and technologies; however, it is important to recognise the new risks and implement appropriate management from the beginning.

The value of safety reps

Since the Robens report in 1972, the value of unionised safety representatives has been taken as a given; since the 1990s, this has expanded - with less empirical evidence - to embrace all forms of worker involvement. A major HSE review of worker participation that started in February 2005, however, eventually rejected placing further duties on employers, and it took until October 2008 for the HSE to produce a new worker-involvement package. The process does, however, appear to have resulted in the HSE becoming ever more strident as to the value of safety reps. The draft strategy reinforces this, acknowledging “strong evidence” that involving workers has a positive effect on OSH performance, and “overwhelming evidence that unionised workplaces and those with health and safety representatives are safer and healthier as a result”. Further: “Whether unionised or not, no matter the size or scope of the organisation, worker involvement is fundamental to good health and safety performance and therefore to good business.” There is also, adds the HSE, “good evidence that workplaces with properly involved unionised safety representatives generally achieve better performance” than those without. That said, the reality is that the country is now less unionised than in the 1970s and 1980s and the HSE, explains Hackitt, has to “work with what exists”.

The new strategy therefore confirms that the HSE will continue to “reinforce the promotion of worker involvement and consultation in health and safety matters throughout unionised and non-unionised workplaces of all sizes”. The HSE wants a genuine partnership based on trust, respect and cooperation: “In the first instance, training managers and health and safety representatives together will establish a shared perspective on health and safety issues.” This, in turn, “encourages the combined involvement of management and health and safety representatives in inspections, investigations and risk assessments”. Joint training has been tried before, with some success, by the GMB union, and continues in a limited fashion in some sectors; it will be fascinating to see what - if anything - the HSE intends to offer beyond words to support either this development or meaningful interventions in non-unionised workplaces.

The most recent evidence is not encouraging. It is generally accepted that employers value the presence of union safety reps once they have first-hand experience of them in action. This is as true in unionised workplaces as it is of non-unionised employers who participated in the Worker Safety Adviser (WSA) scheme, which saw safety reps offer advice at non-unionised - often small - workplaces. Although the employers rated the service useful, the three-year pilot was wound up in April 2007 once the funding ran out. Hackitt insists that “there should come a point when business takes on” schemes such as the WSA. The HSE, she told HSB, “needs to be clearer at the start of a scheme like this that it will hand the scheme - and responsibility for funding it - to business”.

Helping SMEs

The draft strategy recognises the need to “adapt and customise approaches to help the increasing numbers of SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] in different sectors comply with their health and safety obligations”. SMEs, states the HSE, account for a considerable number of OSH incidents and often find goal-based OSH management “difficult to apply”. The objective for the HSE, LAs and stakeholders is therefore “to find new ways to help [SMEs] understand how to comply with [OSH] law in a manner proportionate to the risks posed by their work activities”. Small businesses, adds Hackitt, “need different things in different forms”. She places much faith in the HSE’s model risk assessments, adding that the HSE has evidence that these have proved not just popular but successful in practice. Even so, the HSE could do still more: the next logical step, she believes, is to move on and develop model care plans for individuals.

The strategy fails to address in any depth one of the major problems facing SMEs - lack of access to appropriate advice on OSH that is separate from the regulators. Following the demise of the WSA pilot, Workplace Health Connect - which offered free advice to SMEs - ended in February 2008, despite an impressive track record. It should be noted, however, that Scotland and Wales are pursuing their own variants and that the recent government response to the Black report may well result in a successor of sorts. Hackitt also told HSB that she was prepared to look at issues such as third-party support and pre-qualification schemes, which have the potential to help SMEs.

A triumph of intent?

The most immediate aspect of the draft strategy is that, for a consultative text, it looks too much like the finished article; compared with traditional HSE consultations, it has a high design specification. Nor is there much in the way of words: 15 pages, with just a few hundred words on each page. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing compared with some of the HSE tomes of yesteryear.

The real question is does it pave the way for the “step change” that the HSE craves? The answer will lie mainly in the detail that the HSE will add in the months following the publication of the final version of the strategy. Although the HSE claims that the strategy “is resetting the direction” for OSH, the draft contains little that is radical, even less to disagree with, and just a few pointers to what might prove interesting developments - particularly the move towards more targeted initiatives and the need to embrace the OSH system as a whole. Much of the strategy builds on, or merely restates, key themes of recent years, including trade union involvement, director leadership and a focus on the core OSH business. The truth is that whatever the HSE’s protestations, the draft is not so different to the 2004 strategy, although it would be astonishing if the HSE were proposing “to rip it up and start it all again”.

What might be the most important factor is that there is clearly a strong belief within the highest levels of the HSE that the strategy genuinely represents something new. Allied to Hackitt’s determination that things must change, it is just possible that this belief might secure change.

1. HSE (2008), “The health and safety of Great Britain: be part of the solution” (on the HSE website). To register for a stakeholder event, email or tel: 01772 767717.

2. Second Health and Safety at Work - International Institute of Risk and Safety Management conference, Birmingham, 5 November 2008.

Howard Fidderman is a freelance journalist and editor of HSB.