Major Incident
Roles and Responsibilities

Directors and heads of operating divisions

Roles

Directors and heads of operating divisions are responsible for ensuring that written detailed instructions are produced, maintained and subjected to periodic revision or amendment to implement major incident response arrangements.

The Director/Head of the Operational Directorate/Division with the prime responsibility for the operational response to the incident, must provide a report to the Deputy Director General (Operations) on HSE's response to, and the facts of, the incident, within one month of the major incident occurring.

The report must incorporate information provided by the other Directorates/Divisions involved.

Responsibilities

Heads of Directorates/Divisions should ensure that:

• effective local liaison arrangements with the police, emergency services and local authorities exist and that HSE's role, responsibilities and requirements are properly understood
• an up to date contact list for the relevant industry/sectors is provided for the duty officer system and that an effective communication system for out-of-hours contacts has been established
• D/D or local unit detailed instructions are prepared to implement the major incident response arrangements.

The instructions should adequately address:

• training for inspectors and staff on health and safety issues
• out of hours access to local unit offices
• provision of permanently available incident response packs
• arrangements to secure the site at an early stage and instructions given to those in control of the site to prevent injury and preserve essential evidence, using formal legal powers where necessary
• the need for appropriately experienced inspectors to attend the site at the earliest practical opportunity to begin the investigation
• the management of staff welfare and procedures for adequate allocation of staff to an investigation
• the provision of specialised services suppliers for demolition, security, storage, recovery, etc, who are competent to operate whilst preserving evidence - local units should be able to call these on in the event of a major incident
• agreed assistance from staff in other D/Ds
• consideration of training opportunities in the major incident response arrangements.
  

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