Inspection of offshore installations and operators

Properly prioritising inspections is crucial for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in ensuring it delivers its major hazard strategy while supporting businesses to grow.

HSE therefore aims to ensure its regulatory activity is proportionate to the risks to people, taking into account the operator's performance in controlling risks.

This means we will inspect higher-hazard installations and operators with poorer performance more frequently and in greater depth than installations and operators where risks are perceived to be better managed.

HSE's policy is to conduct inspections in accordance with the Enforcement Policy Statement, applying the principles of the Enforcement Management Model to regulatory decision making:

going to the right places
doing the right things
finishing what we start
leaving a clean record of what we have done

We will prioritise which installations and operators we inspect based on inherent hazards, operator performance, and other intelligence.

Inspection guides

Operator performance is judged against criteria set out within the following inspection guides: