Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
About HSE
Firm, properly targeted and proportionate enforcement underpins the action HSE and local authorities are taking to deliver our Strategy. Enforcement, or the fear of it, is a powerful motivator for improving risk control. Evidence shows that it can act as a wake-up call for employers to introduce more effective risk-control measures. And, through prosecution, dutyholders are brought to account for failures to safeguard health, safety and welfare.
Enforcement activity should not be viewed in isolation. It is only one means of securing compliance with the law. The multi-faceted approach includes emphasis on achieving improvements in sensible risk management, for example, through raising awareness, working with and through intermediaries and campaigning on particular issues.
However, the unique role and powers of health and safety inspectors to enforce the law continue to remain a vital part of how we can drive up health and safety standards.
Inspection, investigation and enforcement are key levers for change. In carrying out these tasks, inspectors are always available to give advice or guidance.
But where conditions are poor or there is blatant disregard for the law, they will not hesitate to use their powers to ensure that dutyholders take action to deal immediately with serious risk and so promote and achieve sustained compliance with the law. And, when required, they will not hesitate to prosecute.
Falling from height is the most common cause of workplace death. Inspectors will continue to use a range of intervention techniques to drive down the numbers of accidents. This has included prosecuting construction contractors before an accident had happened but where there was significant risk and clear non-compliance.
While HSE’s headline figures for notices and prosecutions have declined during 005/06, the commitment to enforcement as a key intervention remains constant. While it is not in the business of conducting enforcement for enforcement’s sake, and does not wish to set enforcement targets, it has reason to believe that it may not have been entirely meeting its standards. Early indications are that enforcement action in 2006/07 is rising.