LAU News - September 2008

Health and safety newsletter for local authorities

Editorial

Welcome to this month’s newsletter. Due to the holiday season, it is a relatively short newsletter this time around. However, this doesn’t mean that The Partnership has been standing still – quite the contrary. Over the next couple of months, we will report back on the evaluation of the Partnership (carried out by PA Consulting), the Better Regulation Executive’s report on health and safety regulation in SMEs, the Partnership Liaison Officer (PLO) recruitment, the reviews of LAC67/1 on planned interventions and data reporting by LAs, and work to progress compliance with Section 18 HSWA. We will be presenting a number of proposal papers to HELA at its October meeting and these, together with the emerging themes of the HSE Strategy, will form part of the Partnership’s programme of work for 2009/2010. Moreover, talking of HELA, this newsletter outlines a little more about HELA and the Local Government Panel. It describes what they are and what they do. We will be updating the LAU website to incorporate this information as part of our work to improve the website.

As always, we very much value your thoughts on how the Partnership can be improved together with any initiatives of good practice you would like to share.

Nick O’Donnell, Local Authority Unit