HSE commissions reports into the assessment of societal concerns

HSE Press Release E231:02 - 17 December 2002

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) commissioned a specialist research team to develop a more systematic and analytical approach to regulatory controls on the societal concerns of hazardous activities.

Harm arising from hazardous activities will, in most cases, be of concern only to those individuals affected directly. However, some hazardous activities also give rise to societal concerns where they impact on society as a whole and, as well as causing harm to individuals, could harm the social fabric if the risk from the hazard were to be realised.

Taking account of societal concerns is already an established part of HSE's approach to reaching decisions on the degree and form of regulatory control of hazardous activities. To develop and refine a way of dealing with societal concerns in decision-making and to make their approach more systematic and analytical, the HSE's Risk Policy Unit commissioned the multidisciplinary team to examine, firstly, the nature and origins of 'societal concerns' and, secondly, to consider mechanisms for incorporating them into the decision-making process. As part of the research, two reports have been produced.

The first, 'Taking Account of Societal Concerns about Risk: Framing the Problem' describes the different groups HSE must contend with in its role as a risk regulator and the significance of the different types of risk about which those groups are concerned. The report concludes that an insightful institutional risk manager seeks to take into account, to the maximum extent possible, the perspectives of all the stakeholders concerned with the risk.

The second report, 'Understanding and responding to societal concerns', societal concerns were characterised according to their nature. A number of theoretical models of risk perception were described and from this a number of common strands and conclusions were drawn that incorporate societal concerns into decision-making. In particular, in a democratic society, plural preferences on risk must be expected, heard and encouraged.

The findings from these two reports will be included in the ongoing review and development of HSE's approach to incorporating societal concerns into decision-making.

"Taking account of societal concerns about risk: Framing the problem" RR 035 is available on HSE website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/

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