1. In March 2011, the Minister for Employment announced the next steps in the Government’s plans for reform of the health and safety system in Britain with the publication of “Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone”.1 Under the reforms, protecting people in the workplace and in society as a whole remains a key priority. The focus of the health and safety regime will move to a lighter touch approach concentrating on higher risk industries and on tackling serious breaches of the rules.
2. The Government’s reforms require HSE and LAs to reduce the number of inspections carried out; to have greater targeting where proactive inspections continue; and to increase information provision to small businesses in a form that is both accessible and relevant to their needs. (See Supporting Material 1 for further information on the context of the Government’s reforms).
3. In May 2011, Local Government Group 2 (LGG) and HSE published joint guidance - “Reducing Proactive Inspections” 3. This document provided guidance for LAs to determine their proactive interventions with flexibility to deliver local and national health and safety priorities within the Government’s overall policy framework.
4. The joint HSE/LGG guidance ask LAs to use both national planning priority information and local information to determine the key causes of serious workplace accidents, injuries and ill-health and to develop intervention plans for poorly performing businesses. The nature of the intervention appropriate to a particular premises will be determined by the rating assigned to the premises (see Annex A and B).
5. This Local Authority Circular (LAC) builds upon this earlier joint guidance to provide LAs with guidance and tools for targeting their interventions. Because of the shift in focus from inspection to intervention, the title of the LAC has changed from ‘Priority Planning’ to ‘Targeting Interventions’ to reflect this.
6. This LAC is guidance under Section 18 Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HSWA) and replaces LAC 67/2 (rev2).
7. This section provides guidance on targeting interventions. Key to this is the need to target health and safety interventions on higher-risk areas and on dealing with serious breaches of health and safety regulation.
8. In determining priorities it is important to consider both the diversity of individual businesses and that work activities will have different levels of hazard and risk depending on the nature of the work undertaken. There are a range of work activities, where the level of risk is either inherently low and/or the duty holders manage the residual risk so well, that the risk profile of the business/sector does not warrant further proactive intervention by regulators.
9. LA inspectors should however be able to deal reactively with matters of evident or potential major health and safety concern when visiting any premises which has been targeted for other purposes e.g. gas safety issues observed during a food safety inspection.
10. Where there is a significant risk gap or a duty holder does not manage significant risks well further proactive health & safety intervention may be necessary. There are thirteen interventions available for use (See Annex A). These interventions are either proactive (eleven intervention types) or reactive (two intervention types). LAs should choose the most appropriate health & safety intervention for the outcomes they wish to achieve noting however they should reserve the use of ‘inspection and enforcement’ for category-A rated premises in accordance with the Joint HSE/LGG statement. The proper use of non-inspection interventions can potentially achieve better overall outcomes than inspections alone and may be just as resource intensive.
11. LAs should decide, plan and target their health & safety interventions by considering the risks that they are trying to address and having regard to the range of interventions available, the risk profile of the business/sector, national information (accident statistics, national priorities, Primary/Lead Authority inspection plans) and local knowledge and priorities.
12. A co-regulatory approach, which gives appropriate recognition to a business’s own efforts to comply with regulations, is one of the more challenging aspects for LAs in implementing truly risk-based enforcement of regulation. The simple regulatory model (Diagram 1) below illustrates the direction of improvement regulatory interventions should have. The aim being to move duty holders into the top right “aware/committed, co-regulation” quartile, where businesses use their own independent certification and audit to manage the risks they create without proactive intervention by regulators.
13. Inspection plans for businesses keen to adopt “earned recognition” within a Primary Authority (PA) scheme are an example of this co-regulatory approach whereby regulators take account of the businesses’ efforts to comply with regulations and adjust their enforcement plans accordingly. Where PA arrangements are in place all LAs should follow the agreed inspection programmes.
14. Note however, that even if a business is in the “co-regulation” category that it may still be necessary to carry out reactive regulatory interventions where appropriate – e.g. an investigation following a complaint or RIDDOR report.
15. In summary, LAs should target their health & safety interventions plans for the premises they enforce using the most appropriate option from the full range of interventions available. In keeping with the joint HSE/LGG guidance, LAs should reserve proactive inspection for Category ‘A’ premises and consider the use of other non-inspection techniques for other categories of premises. In keeping with the Government’s reforms of health and safety, there are no restrictions on reactive work but LAs should consider using HSE’s Incident Selection Criteria and risk based approach to complaints handling to assist with targeting their resources.
16. This section provides guidance on using premises risk ratings to help target interventions.
17. The four Category (A, B1, B2 and C) premises risk-rating system based on a business’s health and safety performance can be found at Annex B. This helps assess and score premises to allow LAs to determine their relative intervention priorities.
18. Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone identifies three categorisations for non-major hazard industries to which we can apply the categorisations in accordance with the joint HSE/LGG guidance:
| Cat A | Suitable for proactive inspection Identify the risk and consider the use of all interventions to address that risk |
|---|---|
| Cat B | Not suitable for proactive inspection identify the risk and consider how you might address it using the remaining 12 interventions |
| Cat C | Use reactive interventions only |
20. It is important that LAs are able to justify any inspections they undertake and to conform to the general Hampton 4 principle of “no inspection should take place with out a reason”. It is not acceptable to target the inspection of a premises on health and safety grounds solely because:- another inspection is happening within the area or; an inspection is happening for another purpose or; there is no evidence or intelligence to suggest that there are significant risk factors present or; to undertake random checks on premises or new premises.
21. LAs should consider the full range of interventions at their disposal for managing health & safety risks in their community, these are:
22. Further detail on this range of interventions is available at Annex A. LAs might also find the flowchart in Supporting Material 2 useful (Flowchart – Overview of advice on local authority intervention planning).
23. The aim of any proactive inspection at a Category A premises is to reduce the risk and the rating to Category B1 or lower and to move the business towards the top right hand quartile of the regulatory model grid in Diagram 1. If conditions have either deteriorated or not improved at an ‘A’ rated premises since the last visit or a previously lower risk premises is re-rated to an ‘A’ strongly consider the use of enforcement, in accordance with the Enforcement Policy Statement 5 and Enforcement Management Model 6 to achieve the improvements necessary to reduce the risk rating. (LAs may find Supporting Material 4 useful for helping identify Poor Performers)
24. To encourage consistency Enforcing Authorities (EA) considering activity in ‘A’ rated premises transferred under the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998 or as part of a flexible warrant initiative should seek advice from the original EA on the appropriateness of the intervention.
25. Reactive regulatory interventions such as dealing with complaints and incident and ill health investigations are a good opportunity to consider how businesses manage health and safety and can contribute to reducing risks. HSE has developed a risk-based approach to complaint handling 7 and incident selection criteria 8, which LAs should adopt to help target their interventions and make best use of resources.
26. Supporting Material 3 outlines the national priorities for proactive and reactive interventions. This document will need refreshing annually to coincide with the LA planning cycle and LAs should use this alongside their local intelligence and local priorities to develop their intervention plans. (See Supporting Material 5 and 6 for a draft intervention plan summary table produced for LAs as a planning aide and an outline of the potential sources of information that can support intervention planning).
27. Supporting Material 7 on reporting progress includes the LAE1 (to be refreshed annually).
28. LAs should monitor complaints and incidents to identify any matters that may present a potential significant local issue, In determining what forms of intervention will be the most effective LAs should consider the businesses risk rating and select their interventions accordingly
29. In summary, LAs should use their risk ratings to inform their intervention plans concentrating their inspection resources on higher risk premises, defined national and local priorities and reactive interventions and use the full range of non-inspection interventions for their lower risk premises.
