Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Press Releases
Today the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) published its new enforcement policy statement, which for the first time sets out specific criteria for deciding whether to investigate and prosecute breaches of health and safety law.
The policy will apply to all Britain's enforcing authorities, including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and all local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. It will make clear to inspectors, employers, workers and the public what standards they should expect when it comes to enforcing health and safety in the work place.
The policy states that a prosecution should normally take place in any one of a number of circumstances, including:
Decisions on whether to investigate a workplace incident must take account of a number of factors, including:
The HSC's policy also requires all Britain's enforcing authorities and their inspectors to:
HSC Chair Bill Callaghan said:
"Our main concern is for accidents not to happen in the first place - and therefore much of the enforcing authorities' activity is designed to encourage employers to assess risks properly and take relevant preventive measures. But when serious incidents do occur, we must have an effective framework within which appropriate enforcement action can take place."The policy demonstrates to employers, workers and all other interested parties what they can expect from the enforcers - and how the watchdogs should respond to serious workplace incidents. The standards should be the same, regardless of the inspector, enforcing authority or the sector of industry involved."
Mr Callaghan emphasised the need to hold employers accountable for their organisations' health and safety performance. He said:
"Most employers do treat health and safety as a priority. But there are still too many who don't, with tragic consequences. In particular, inspectors must consider carefully the role of individual managers and directors when serious failures do occur - and ensure that appropriate action is taken against them if the evidence justifies it."The HSC relies on the co-operation of responsible bosses to safeguard the health and safety of Britain's work force and tries to give every encouragement for them to do so. Last year we published good practice guidance for directors of public and private sector bodies.
Building on this, we now expect the authorities to notify directors whenever formal enforcement action is taken against their organisation."
Mr Callaghan concluded with a warning to negligent employers:
"Now, more than ever, there is no excuse for those at the top to be ignorant of their responsibilities or to fail to take effective action. If you cannot manage health and safety, then you cannot manage."
In order to ensure its continuing effectiveness, the enforcement policy will be monitored over the next five years and reviewed by the HSC.
The enforcement policy statement is on the web at http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hse41.pdf
1. On 7 June 2000, HSC Chairman Bill Callaghan and Deputy Prime Minister John Precott launched the Revitalising Health and Safety initiative. This aims to achieve, by the year 2010, the following national targets: reduce the incidence of working days lost from work-related injury and ill-health by 30 per cent; reduce the incidence of people suffering from work-related ill-health by 20 per cent; and reduce the rate of fatal and major injury accidents by 10 per cent. There is an additional target of achieving half of each improvement by the year 2004. HSC has identified eight priority areas - major hazards and worst-performing sectors of industry - where improvement is most needed to meet the targets. These are: construction; agriculture; the health service; stress; musculoskeletal disorders; falls from heights; slips and trips; and work-related transport. For more information, visit the Revitalising Health and Safety web site at http://www.hse.gov.uk/revitalising/.
2. The HSC's enforcement policy statement sets out the general principles and approach which the HSC expects the health and safety enforcing authorities (mainly HSE and local authorities) to follow in enforcing health and safety law, including the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
3. The enforcement policy statement is informed by the following principles: proportionality in applying the law and securing compliance; consistency of approach; targeting of enforcement action; transparency about how the regulator operates and what those being regulated might expect; and accountability for the regulators' action.
4. Directors responsibilities for Health and Safety was published by the HSC in July 2001. It provides good practice guidance on health and safety for directors and board members of both public and private sector organisations. The guidance is available at www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg343.pdf
5. HSE has been developing and trialling an enforcement management model (EMM) to ensure that the HSC's enforcement policy statement can be put into practice consistently and demonstrably. The EMM outlines a step-by-step process which will ensure that inspectors take account of all the factors set out in the enforcement policy statement when making enforcement decisions.
6. The HSE's enforcement database was launched in October 2000. It gives details of all successful prosecutions carried out by HSE and names the convicted employers. In October 2001 the database was expanded to include all improvement and enforcement notices served by the HSE. The HSE database can be found on the web at www.hse.gov.uk/prosecutions. There is also a local authorities enforcement database on www.hse.gov.uk/lau/pdfs/hela0001.pdf
Copies of the HSE's Enforcement Policy Statement (HSE41), can be ordered online at http://www.hsebooks.com or are available from HSE Books, PO Box 1999, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 2WA, tel: 01787-881165 or fax: 01787-313995.
Call HSE's InfoLine, tel: 0845 345 0055
or write to: HSE Information Services, Caerphilly Park, Caerphilly
CF83 3GG.
Published on the HSE web site on 8 March 2002