Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Simplification plan
The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) 2008 Simplification Plan is the third in a series of annual plans to outline HSE’s progress in reducing the administrative burden of health and safety regulation, as well as showing how the organisation is delivering the Government’s better regulation agenda.
Since the establishment of the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) and HSE in 1974, the health and safety legislative framework has helped to deliver significant improvements in workplace health and safety, including a reduction of fatalities at work by nearly two thirds. In 2008, HSC and HSE merged to become a single unitary body, retaining the HSE name.
HSE, working with local authorities, aims to reduce accidents and ill-health from work-related activities. Improving health and safety outcomes can help to improve the performance of a business. However, unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy do not help to improve levels of health and safety in the workplace and can act as a deterrent to compliance. In 2005 a cross-government exercise measured the administrative burdens resulting from legislation across all departments (see the Administrative Burden Measurement Exercise (ABME) section).
In line with other government departments, HSE is committed to working towards reducing administrative burdens by 25% from a 2005 baseline level, without reducing levels of health and safety protection. The ABME calculated an indicative annual cost of £2.03 billion of administrative burdens stemming from health and safety legislation. To achieve a 25% reduction, HSE’s estimated reduction target was £508 million. This has been modified, mainly as a result of machinery of government changes, to a total cost of £2.02 billion and a £505 million reduction target.
HSE’s 2006 and 2007 Plans set out initiatives to help to achieve the target. Progress and delivery of these projects is outlined below:
| Initiative title and description | Target reduction from ABME data | Delivery of initiative / timings |
|---|---|---|
| Sensible Risk Management – increasing compliance, and encouraging proportionate risk management – and addressing risk assessment costs in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1989 | £200 million plus reduction in risk assessment costs from requirements in other legislation |
Partially completed Further evaluation to be carried out in 2009 |
| Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations – reviewing the requirement for a landlord to carry out a gas safety check | Up to £59 million | Changes to be implemented by May 2010 |
| Lifting Operations & Lifting Equipment Regulations – new guidance to clarify examination of equipment requirements | Up to £33 million | Completed Evaluation to be carried out in 2009 |
| Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006 – consolidating three sets of regulations and removing the requirement for a licence to work with textured decorative coatings | £27.7 million | Completed |
| Manual Handling Operations Regulations – guidance on the labelling of loads | Up to £32.5 million | Partially completed Evaluation to be carried out in 2009 |
| The written health and safety policy statement – an electronic template for the statement | Up to £26.5 million | Development work completed Delayed to integrate with new work on electronic risk assessment template |
| Forms project – amending legislation to remove 8 outdated forms, plus removal of 54% of HSE’s forms not required by law | £21.25 million | Forms not required by legislation removed Regulatory change due in April 2009 |
| Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations – guidance on labelling water | Up to £17 million | Completed Evaluation underway |
| RIDDOR1 project – reducing the time taken to report incidents at work | £16.6 million | Completed |
| Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations – rationalising and improving guidance and reducing risk assessment costs | Up to £11 million | Delayed from timings in the 2007 Simplification Plan. Now due to be completed in 2009 |
| Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations – amending regulations on the health and safety law poster | £10.3 million | Regulatory change due in April 2009 |
| Business online project – making HSE’s forms available in an electronic and interactive format | Up to £10 million | Partially delivered, remaining forms to be completed by May 2010 |
| Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulations 2005 – revising the frequency for submitting a safety case from three years to five years | £3.8 million | Completed |
| Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 – clarifying and simplifying requirements for the notification of construction projects | £3.6 million | Completed |
| ACoP2 on Zoos – AcoP no longer in existence | £544,000 | Completed |
Since publication of the 2007 Plan, HSE has successfully delivered three of these projects: guidance on labelling the weight of loads, guidance on clarifying examinations of equipment, and guidance on labelling drinking water, and will carry out evaluation on these to determine whether the target savings have been achieved. Savings resulting from these projects add to those already achieved from initiatives delivered previously, including reducing the time taken to report injuries, and simplifying construction and asbestos regulations.
Several of HSE’s projects were approved in October by an independent External Validation Panel, whose members include representatives from the Confederation of British Industry, Institute of Directors, British Chambers of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses and Trades Union Congress. Approved projects were the asbestos regulations consolidation, the labelling of drinking water, reporting incidents (ie RIDDOR) and example risk assessments.
In the last year, HSE has identified three additional initiatives which will reduce administrative burdens on business:
| Initiative title and description | Target reduction from indicative ABME figures | Delivery of initiative / timings |
|---|---|---|
| Good practice guidance on worker involvement – clarifying requirements on providing health and safety information to safety representatives | Up to £36.6 million | Partially completed Evaluation to be carried out in 2009 |
| Docks form – removal of an outdated form | £3.6 million | Regulatory change due in April 2010 |
| Electronic risk assessment template – additional initiative linked to HSE’s work on Sensible Risk Management | Not yet quantified | Due to be delivered by April 2009 |
With the addition of these new initiatives, HSE’s 2008 Simplification Plan outlines projects that will reduce administrative burdens by over 25% if successful. The timetables and projected administrative savings for all of HSE’s simplification initiatives are outlined in the Plan.
HSE is committed to wider better regulation work in addition to the administrative burden reduction programme. In the past year, the following key strands of work have taken place:
HSE has continued to work closely with its stakeholders, such as representatives from businesses, trade unions, local authorities and trade associations, in the development of simplification projects as well as wider better regulation initiatives.
Over the next year, HSE will continue to develop its simplification initiatives, including focusing efforts on communicating these to businesses to raise awareness amongst businesses. HSE will also carry out evaluations on a number of these projects to determine whether projected savings have been delivered as well as examining their overall impact.