Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Enforcement
Each year too many people are killed, injured or made ill by work. This is unacceptable and it is the Health and Safety Commission and Executive’s mission to lead the way in reducing such injury and ill health. In doing so, we recognise the crucial contribution that formal enforcement makes.
Our emphasis is on prevention but, where appropriate, we will come down hard on those that put others at risk, particularly where we find deliberate flouting of the law. In doing this we are guided by the HSC’s Enforcement policy statement [PDF 175 kb], which reflects the principles of the Enforcement Concordat, and the Code for Crown Prosecutors. Society in general, law-abiding businesses and workers expect this of us. We have included examples of prosecutions where duty holders have flouted the law and shown reckless disregard for health and safety requirements.
Firm, properly targeted and proportionate enforcement underpins the action we need to take to deliver the HSC’s Strategy. Our powers to take enforcement action amplify all that we do to deliver a sustainable, long-term reduction in occupational injury and ill health. However, to achieve our goals we use a range of interventions, in this we are directed by the guiding points set out in the HSC’s Sensible health and safety at work: The regulatory methods used in Great Britain [PDF 72KB] . Our approach recognises that a risk-free society is neither desirable nor possible, and that sensible health and safety is about managing risks, not eliminating them.
The report includes some examples of people who have paid the human price of poor health and safety management. They have agreed to share their experiences to help protect others from similar traumas. These remind us why taking action against those that fail to protect others from at-work risks is so important. And why, no one should be in any doubt that, where appropriate, we will use our enforcement powers.
This report provides data on the prosecutions taken and enforcement notices served by HSE during 2004/05. These figures show a fall.
In 2004/5, HSE brought 712 prosecutions - 78% of that in 2002/03 (908 prosecutions), and 74% of that in 2003/04 (963 prosecutions). We continued to have a high success rate, this year securing convictions in 95% of the cases we brought. The average penalty for our cases was £18,765, this was 31% up on the level of penalty for our cases in 2003/4.
In view of this fall, we have analysed our figures, confirming that most of our prosecutions (around 90 to 95%) are taken as a result of investigation into incidents, mainly those reported to us under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995. We refer to such reports as 'RIDDORs'.
Since 1997/98 there has been a steady decline in the number of RIDDORs received by HSE. In the two years between 2002/3 and 2004/5 the number of RIDDORs reported to us fell by around 15%. We have therefore concluded that the drop in the number of prosecutions we took between 2002/3 and 2004/5 is, in part, due to the fall in the number of RIDDORs reported to us. However, this decline does not explain fully the fall in prosecution numbers between 2003/4 and 2004/5.
Our analysis indicates that a significant factor in the fall was the reduction in the number of RIDDORs we selected for investigation. In 2003 we decided to target more resource to preventative work and to balance our reactive and proactive work to give a 40:60 split. We recognised that to achieve this division and to resource fully and target our investigative work (given the significant resource demands upon us to deliver high quality joint investigations with the police and to work within the Criminal Justice System) that we needed to investigate fewer incidents. We therefore actively managed the processes by which we selected incidents for investigation by strict application of the HSC’s Incident Selection Criteria. The result was that in 2004/5 we investigated 24% fewer incidents than we had done in 2003/4 and 45% fewer than in 2002/3, but the proportion of investigations now leading to prosecutions has increased. Indeed, the percentage of selected incidents leading to prosecution has gradually increased from a low of around 7.5% in 2000/1 to just over 12% in 2004/5. Providing further evidence that we have improved the targeting of our investigation work.
We know that we are devoting about the same amount of resource, year-on-year, to investigation and enforcement activities but producing fewer prosecutions. There are two main factors at play here: joint working with the police under the Work-related Deaths Protocol [PDF 60kb]; and working within the Criminal Justice System and to legal processes that, for very good reasons, are increasingly more time consuming.
We are working increasingly with the police on manslaughter investigations, and estimate that this is taking up about 10% of our total investigation and enforcement resource. However, it is worth noting that our recording system prevents us from recognising this high quality contribution, a situation we intend to rectify.
Devoting resource to high profile joint investigations with the police has resulted in fewer HSE prosecutions. However, such investigations are likely to lead to serious criminal charges being brought by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). We believe that this is the right and appropriate use of resource, to ensure justice for those killed by work, and that the most serious risks are properly investigated. We also believe that these cases provide a stronger deterrent effect and through publicity lead to improved standards in many workplaces. To illustrate this we have included an example of a recent joint HSE/police investigation leading to a custodial sentence for manslaughter.
For the criminal offences set out in health and safety legislation, we are pleased to see that the courts are prepared to impose larger fines, a welcome development in making the case that compliance with health and safety law must continue to be taken seriously, and an indication that we are targeting the right incidents for investigation. The very recent high fines against Transco and Balfour Beatty are examples that show the continuing quality of our investigative work and the seriousness with which health and safety offences are rightly treated.
During 2004/5, HSE inspectors served 8445 enforcement notices. This was about 25% fewer than the average level between 1998 and 2004 (over 10,000 a year, with a peak of over 13,000 in 2003/04). The level of notice activity in 2004/5 was at a similar level to that of 1997/98.
There are a number of reasons behind the recent decline in notice activity.
We are using a range of interventions to deliver HSC’s Strategy. For example, within the construction industry (an area where we had traditionally served many notices) we are intervening in the design and concept stages of projects, working with others to manage down risks before the construction processes begin. During a period in which the sector has been experiencing growth, fewer injuries have been reported and with less enforcement needing to be taken.
We know that our inspectors are dealing increasingly with health hazards, and working with duty holders to problem–solve and benchmark standards, an approach which does not automatically lead to service of notices. Such visits are taking longer but produce sustainable improvements in a dutyholder’s management of risks. But fewer of these visits are possible and since there is a link between inspection contacts and notices, fewer notices are being served.
However, within our approach, we continue to reserve the right to serve notices where circumstances and risks dictate such action appropriate. Indeed, we are increasing working with local authorities in fully resourced and targeted campaigns designed to ensure that duty holders are managing risks in priority areas.