Health and Safety Executive helps develop new National Vocational Qualification training standards

HSE Press Release E132:02 - 8 August 2002

As part of the revision and development of National Vocational Qualifications (S/NVQs), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has worked closely with the Employment National Training Organisation to introduce new qualifications covering health and safety practice and regulation.

Level 5 - the new qualification - has been accredited for health and safety regulation and replaces the previous level 4 qualification. It will be used by regulators within HSE and possibly by local authority health and safety regulators.

Additionally, a new level 5 has been accredited for senior health and safety practitioners, to supplement revised level 4 and level 3 qualifications for practitioners. The standards and qualifications for radiation protection have also been revised.

Units from the level 3 health and safety practitioner qualification are particularly relevant to small firms and to junior or middle managers in larger companies, where multi-skilled managers need to develop health and safety expertise to supplement other skills.

Individual employees can also use these units to develop skills to enable them to contribute to, and support, health and safety management in the companies they work for. These Stand Alone Units may be taken as single Unit qualifications, and are also incorporated into other qualifications developed by other National Training Organisations (NTOs).

Awarding bodies are now applying to QCA/SQA to offer the new awards and it is anticipated that candidates may be registered for the new awards from Autumn 2002.

Individuals and organisations can use the new standards as personal and organisational development tools.

Sheila Hawkins, Review Manager at the Employment NTO says of the new standards:

"Standards are more than just qualifications and I believe that other uses can include development of health and safety policies within organisations. Job descriptions identify key activities - this is what national occupational standards do."

Other uses for the standards can include the development of:

• Individual performance objectives;
• Organisational performance objectives; and
• Appraisal systems.

Anne Wilson, HSE Field Operations Directorate Training Manager confirms that:

"The new standards clearly set out best practice. They will help managers and employees incorporate health and safety into the rest of their work effectively and they will lead to better all round competence among health and safety regulators and practitioners."

Notes to editors

1. The new standards and qualifications will prove useful to any one concerned with health and safety in the workplace.

2. Standards and Qualifications are now available for purchase from the Employment NTO www.ento.co.uk

3. Standards and Qualifications are now available for purchase on CD-ROM for £32.50 from the Employment NTO www.ento.co.uk

4. The awarding bodies will be City and Guilds and OCR. It is possible that other awarding bodies will also offer some of these Qualifications.

5. Awarding Bodies are now applying to QCA/SQA to offer the new awards - contact your Awarding Body for details on: www.city-and-guilds.org.uk; www.sqa.org.uk.

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