Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Simplification plan
To make a significant difference to dutyholders, in the 2006 plan HSE focussed on those initiatives that:
The elements in the key initiatives section of the plan were:
| Initiative Title | Summary description |
|---|---|
| Sensible Risk Management | To develop the culture of health and safety at work - providing accessible, useable advice and guidance, encouraging effective risk management through proportionate risk assessment |
| Forms projects | Three projects looking to reduce the amount and burden of HSE forms |
| Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations | A review of the gas safety regulatory regime including reviewing the landlords’ gas safety check in line with risk based principles |
| Lifting Operations & Lifting Equipment and Provision & Use of Work Equipment Regulations | Initially producing new guidance to clarify what is required. Followed by a scoping review of the regulations to consider other simplification measures |
| Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations | Proposed by a senior Local Authority EHO. Consideration of the usefulness of the approved health & safety poster/ leaflet and investigation of delivery options for the information on it |
| Construction Regulations | To restructure and simplify, including simplifying the project notification threshold, requirements for formal appointments and plans, and the process for checking dutyholder competence |
| Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations | Rationalising guidance, making it more accessible and focusing on key ‘how to’ information for employers |
The following is a summary of progress on these key initiatives:
Risk assessment and management is one of the underpinning principles of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the regulations that support it; assessing and then managing the risks created by a work activity so far as is reasonably practicable.
“Our main messages are clear. Don’t overcomplicate things, keep your risk assessment fit for purpose, make it a living document and act on it.By itself, filling in a form never saved a life”
Sir Bill Callaghan,
HSC Chair 1999 - 2007
July ’07
The significance of risk assessment and management was underlined in the ABME where the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, which provide the overarching requirement for risk assessment, came out as HSC/E’s largest single administrative cost and make up 29% of the estimated total baseline. In addition, requirements to assess risks are included in the Regulations on Manual Handling, Noise at Work and Display Screen Equipment.
The Sensible Risk Management project was initiated in 2006 to increase compliance with risk management requirements and raise standards of health and safety in the workplace by making advice and guidance more accessible and easier to understand. HSE has built upon this project over the past year, getting businesses and Local Authorities to focus more on practical risk management and less on documentation for its own sake. The last 12 months have been very successful at raising awareness and if we can continue this success we will significantly reduce the amount of paperwork businesses produce and so reduce administrative burdens. HSE intends that this initiative will reduce the costs of compliance by up to a third and so contribute two fifths of HSC/E’s target for administrative burdens reduction.
There were a number of elements to the SRM initiative that took place this year. These included:
The Embedding Sensible Risk Management project is targeting mainly lower risk small and medium-sized businesses. The example risk assessments are simple, easy to use guidance that help a business see what a ‘good enough’ record of a risk assessment for a business in their sector might look like. The full list of example RAs published by November 2007 now contains:
HSE worked closely with stakeholders in each sector to produce the examples, for example:
“I have taken a look at the [example] risk assessment and ... I am happy that I did. Before reading [it] I was unsure of what exactly needs to be covered in the risk assessment for my business and was finding it difficult to get to grips with it. However, since reading it I have now completed my risk assessment and it took a fraction of the time I had spent on researching the topic.”
Convenience store owner, Birmingham - September 2007
The removal of forms which are outdated, unnecessary or which duplicate information gathered elsewhere was a recommendation of the Hampton review. To facilitate this HSE undertook a zero-based review of all its forms and concluded that 54% of the current stock of forms could be removed quickly as they are no longer in use and are not required by law. This work was completed in April 2007. Whilst this will not result in a significant cut in costs to business, it signifies HSE’s determination to remove old and outdated bureaucracy and will reduce the potential for confusion and error.
The Factories Act (FA) and the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act (OSRPA) have been considered for repeal alongside the removal of forms F9 and OSR1, required for registering new businesses, and 7 other FA forms. It was found that the public resource needed for the complete repeal of both Acts would not be proportionate to the limited practical benefit this would provide to businesses.
The project to remove all the forms without repealing the Acts was initiated in August 2007. This will require stakeholder consultation, particularly with the Local Authorities as most OSR1 forms are submitted to them, in order to amend the legislation. The project is expected to take approximately 15 months to complete and the amended law will come into effect in line with the common commencement date of April 2009. If it is possible to completely remove all these forms the saving to business from the ABME total will be approximately £20 million.
In 2006 HSE completed a major review of the whole domestic gas safety regime. Following this review, proposals are being taken forward to introduce competition into the gas installer registration scheme, simplify the registration arrangements and reduce burdens on gas installers. The overall objective of the reforms is to modernise the regime and improve gas safety for the domestic consumer.
A new gas installer registration scheme is being developed and a tendering process was launched in July 2007. HSE will appoint a single provider to run the scheme and is seeking innovation in the delivery of existing and new responsibilities. These will include leading industry action on public awareness of gas safety and providing new incentives to registration such as a simplified registration process. There is also a requirement to set fees for registration at affordable levels, working to reduce them in real terms during the 5 year lifetime of the agreement.
HSE also committed to undertaking a review of the annual check of gas appliances by residential landlords, as the ABME indicated that it places a high cost on dutyholders. This is due in large part to the number of such appliances throughout the domestic rented accommodation sector. However, this requirement is not currently risk-based: it is uniform across all appliances irrespective of age, type or evidence of level of risk. In 2006 research was carried out to consider whether a risk-based approach to these checks could be developed, but the results suggested a complicated picture and did not provide obvious options for simplification. Now that the new registration scheme process is underway, HSE is planning a public consultation on possible changes to the landlords’ gas safety check requirement in the first half of 2008.
This project is addressing concerns over a lack of clarity and possible overlap in the requirements of two sets of regulations: the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations and the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations. In order to provide a proportionate response to these concerns, a staged response to the perceived duplication of requirements has been developed. This allows us to consider the effectiveness of the previous stage in refining the next one. The stages are:
A review of the requirement for dutyholders to purchase and display the HSE approved poster/distribute the HSE approved leaflet was proposed by a Senior Environmental Health Officer. The poster/leaflet provides information to employees on health and safety law and their employer’s duties.
HSE committed to looking at options for amending or removing the requirements to purchase and display the poster/distribute the leaflet. Alternative ways of providing information to employees is also being considered. Research into the usefulness of the poster has been completed and a number of options have been developed. Following an initial Health and Safety Commission discussion in Autumn 2007 the team is investigating how options might be delivered, in particular, looking at what flexibility there is within the regulations to reduce the cost of compliance.
The ABME indicated that the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994 (CDM ‘94) had a high total administrative cost, but there was no individual requirement that carried the bulk of the burden. The project to amend and simplify CDM was successfully completed, with the new regulations coming into force in April 2007. HSE’s regulatory impact assessment (RIA) showed very significant savings for businesses through the improved process for proving competency and the new regulations were warmly welcomed by stakeholders involved in construction. At the same time the project consolidated four sets of regulations into one. However, few of these costs were measured in the ABME and so the savings calculated in the RIA (of between £106 million and £226 million per year) only contribute £3.6 million to the target HSE has been set for administrative burden reductions.
HSE’s focus is on accessible guidance, easily understood by non-experts and SMEs. This has concentrated work to simplify dutyholders’ understanding of COSHH requirements into the two areas outlined in the paragraphs below.
HSE has been rationalising the stock of COSHH guidance and making COSHH guidance documents through the web more accessible and easier to use. By April 2007 the stock of guidance had been reduced from 130 items to 30.
In addition we are developing key ‘how to’ information for employers undertaking risk assessments of substances at their workplaces. The revision of the COSHH guidance web pages, to include these simple key messages, is being completed in Autumn 2007. The COSHH Essentials website is also being redesigned to complement this work to make it much more user-friendly. This work is planned for completion in mid-2008.
Simpler, quicker access to easy-to-use help will mean more effective, proportionate risk assessment, risk management and staff training. This work aims to achieve savings to many business sectors from gaining access to the right information more quickly.
“The Core Criteria [for electrical contractors] have already been effective in terms of simplifying the ...health and safety regime. All members of the Specialist Engineering Contractors' group... 300,000 operatives, have signed up to it. ...various assessment schemes are beginning to recognise each other, using the Core Criteria... [This] means that many small contractors are having to demonstrate the required standard on fewer occasions, saving time and cost.”
Paul Reeve
Electrical Contractors Association
Three sets of asbestos regulations were consolidated into the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006. Following research into the levels of fibre release from such work showing lower levels of risk to workers, the requirement for companies working with textured decorative coatings to hold a licence and to notify HSE or the local authority of each job was removed from the new regulations. Licensing is reserved for high risk work. These simplifications came into effect when the revised regulations came into force in November 2006.
The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) have been reviewed, and a simple, user-friendly website has been launched together with the promotion of a quick telephone reporting system. These two initiatives have significantly reduced the average time it takes to comply with the requirement to notify HSE of reportable incidents.
The Electrical Contractors Association worked with HSE to develop core criteria to tackle the proliferation of contractor health and safety pre-qualification schemes. Following their publication, companies are being increasingly assessed to these core criteria and they will find less need to undertake multiple assessments, with the attendant cost savings.
The table below shows approximate savings from the costs for the requirements detailed in this section as estimated in the ABME and should be read in that context.
| Initiatives where work has taken place to date | 2010 target reduction for each initiative | Estimated Savings to May 2007 | Estimated Savings to Nov 2007 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sensible Risk Management | £200 million | £400,000 | £28,970,000 |
| Forms projects | £20.25 million | £250,000 | £250,000 |
| Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations | up to £59 million | - | - |
| Lifting Operations & Lifting Equipment and Provision & Use of Work Equipment Reg.s | £33 million | - | £10,000,000 |
| Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations | £9 million | - | - |
| Construction Regulations | £3.6 million | £3,620,000 £160,000,000[1] |
£3,620,000 £160,000,000 |
| Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations | £11 million | - | £4,000,000 |
| Asbestos - savings from notifications | £290,000 | £290,000 | £290,000 |
| Asbestos - savings from across all business sectors affected | £27.2 million | £27,480,000 | £27,480,000 |
| RIDDOR | £16,600,000 | £16,600,000 | £16,600,000 |
| ‘Core criteria’ for Electrical Contractors | £170,000 | £170,000 | £170,000 |
| Off-shore installations[2] | £3,950,000 | £3,950,000 | £3,950,000 |
| Removal of Railways regulation from HSE | £1,500,000 | £1,500,000 | £1,500,000 |
| Removal of ACoP for Zoos[3] | £544,000 | £544,000 | £544,000 |
| TOTALS to date | £49,684,000 | £97,354,000 |
Notes
- Savings calculated in the regulatory impact assessment. These costs were not included in the ABME estimates and so do not count towards HSC/E’s 25% reduction in administrative burden. [back]
- Changes to the regulations to remove unnecessary burdens came into force in April 2006. For details see the 2006 simplification plan. [back]
- The Approved Code of Practice: Zoos - Safety Health & Welfare has been discontinued and new guidance has been published. [back]
By November, the total reduction to the administrative burdens baseline will be £97million, which is 19% of our target of just under £508 million.
‘Culture shift’, to see health and safety compliance as practical action, proportionate to the real risks (such as encouraging dutyholders to keep risk assessment fit for purpose and not to produce documentation for its own sake) will take time to evolve into new ways of working. This will require consistent work to ensure simple, accessible guidance gets to those who need it to produce substantial change, and so deliver cost reductions over the lifetime of the plan. All initiatives working to this end will be kept under review and if the expected cost savings are not materialising we will consider the need for legislative change in particular areas, probably through Europe, though this would be to the longer timescale.
A number of the simplification initiatives came to an end in 2007, but it is only after this that their impact will start to be felt as the work embeds. More changes are timetabled to be in place by 2008, with these too taking time to take root. Overarching these changes will be the work on risk assessment and management, which is on-going throughout the lifetime of the plan to have a growing effect; building year on year, from changes already put in place in July 2006 to the end of the plan’s lifecycle in March 2010.
The graph below gives an indication of the timeline for implementation of projects contributing to HSC/E’s administrative burden reduction. The slight rise shows new regulations coming into force before May 2006 (see annex 1). The trajectory shows that, as more and more initiatives come to fruition from November 2007 onwards, significant savings are expected to start to accrue. For example, by November 2008 the initiatives dealing with Manual Handling and water labelling, and a large proportion of the Sensible Risk Management initiative will have been delivered.
The graph shows six-monthly administrative burden totals as new legislation comes into force and simplifications are implemented. Only legislation planned at the time of writing has been included (see annex 1) and so it is possible that additional costs may have to be added in the future. In the same way, the administrative burden savings may increase according to the success of the projects in this plan and any new simplification initiatives HSE may develop.