| 17 |
Given that the responsibility for health and safety
rests with employers, a major part of the HSE's
work is informing and advising them on health
and safety matters, through guidance, advice on
legislation and consultation. More direct contact
with individual employers comes through the work
of the HSE's fieldforce of inspectors. Their work
involves proactive inspections of workplaces and
investigations of reported accidents and complaints. |
| 18 |
Inspection
Work
The aim of inspections is to ensure that workplaces
are compliant with the Health and Safety at Work
Act and to thereby prevent accidents or long term
health problems. During such inspections, inspectors
may go beyond giving advice, and be involved in
'enforcement' work, where they issue firms with
prohibition or improvement notices.[32] The HSE
told us that this 'proactive inspection' was their
largest programme "forming about half of
all regulatory contacts [with employers] a year" |
| 19 |
The
HSE operates an 'Inspection Rating Scheme' which
determines which premises are to be selected for
inspection. This scheme rates workplaces based
on the degree of 'risk' they present.[34] The
selection process is also influenced by the HSE's
priorities for a particular year.[35] The HSE
told us that all those premises falling into the
highest risk category are inspected and that this
would account for 10 per cent of workplaces in
1999-2000. Lower risk premises are very rarely
inspected, although the HSE claims that it aims
to contact, if not inspect, these at least once
in every 6 years. |
| 20 |
The
HSE shares enforcement of the Act with local authorities
which are responsible, through the work of Environmental
Health Officers, for enforcing the Act in 1.3
million 'lower risk' premises. These include shops,
offices, restaurants, residential care homes and
entertainment facilities. |
| 21 |
Investigation Work
Reactive investigations take place in response
to a reported injury or death and comprise about
a quarter of all regulatory contact with employers.[37]
The aim of such investigations is to establish
why an incident occurred, put in place improvements,
ensure similar accidents do not occur in other
workplaces and, where appropriate, to prosecute
the employer. |
| 22 |
The
HSE investigates all fatalities which are reported
to it,[38] but only 6 per cent of major accidents.[39]
In reality the percentage is much lower since
only a third of reportable injuries are notified
by employers to the HSE. While the HSE recognises
this "substantial under-reporting of non-fatal
injuries," it claimed that the situation
has improved, with recent surveys showing that
the proportion of reported non-fatal injuries
has risen to 47 per cent, albeit with significant
variations between sectors.[40] We recommend that
the HSE brings forward proposals aimed at increeasing
the reporting of all injuries in the workplace. |
| 23 |
The
balance between preventative and reactive or investigation
work programmes and, in particular, the need to
improve investigation rates of reported injuries,
became key issues for our Inquiry. |
| 24 |
There was considerable concern among witnesses
that the HSE's record in responding to reported
injuries—and in prosecuting—was poor.
However, while there was consensus about this,
there was at the same time great uncertainty about
whether the emphasis of HSE activity should be
changed. We received a range of views. |
| 25 |
A number of witnesses believed that the HSE's
current focus on prevention may be wrong. RoSPA
(the Royal Society for the Protection of Accidents),
for example, argued that the HSE's advisory role
may have been given too much prominence in recent
years and it told us that "there has inevitably
been the suspicion that more emphasis is now being
placed on the giving of advice and guidance by
inspectors rather than the use of enforcement
procedures".[41] This was also the main thrust
of the evidence submitted by the Centre for Corporate
Accountability. |
| 26 |
However,
other witnesses believed that the HSE was right
to focus on preventative work. The TUC noted that
"prosecutions take up inordinate amounts
of Inspectors' time" and went on to say that
"there is little scope to increase substantially
the number of prosecutions taken by Inspectors
because their best efforts lie in prevention".[42]
The London Hazards Centre also strongly believed
that the emphasis should be on the preventative
principle. It argued that the "current practice
of responding to worker injury must be eradicated".[43]
The DETR took this argument further, claiming
that the preventative or advisory role of the
HSE had previously not been accorded enough emphasis.
It stated that the "policing role, combined
with resource constraints, has arguably inhibited
the development of a more customer-friendly and
responsive aspect to the work of HSE".[44]
The Minister for the Environment also made the
Department's position clear in oral evidence telling
us that "prevention is still the real thrust
of the policy". |
| 27 |
This
also remains the HSE's stance, although it is
planning a limited increase in the proportion
of reported injuries it will investigate. The
Director General of the HSE told us that the target
was to increase this by about three per cent between
1999-00 and 2001-02.[46] The HSE claims that to
aim for a higher proportion would compromise its
other work: "Any major increase beyond that
[increase] would seriously reduce the number of
preventive inspections and detract from the primary
objective of ensuring that risks are properly
controlled and that incidents do not occur" |
| 28 |
There
is little conclusive evidence to support a major
re-orientation of the HSE's work. Clearly any
shift in the balance would have adverse consequences,
unless additional resources were forthcoming.
In particular, a reduction in advisory or preventative
work could be counter-productive in that it might
lead to some diminution in health and safety standards.
That said, there are strong calls for increases
in prosecutions and investigations, which the
HSE is at least partially responding to. |
| 29 |
We
agree that the HSE's focus should remain largely
preventative. However, we are disappointed by
the low levels of investigation and prosecution
that are undertaken by the HSE. There is an urgent
need to increase rates on both counts. We therefore
support the proposed target of a three per cent
increase in investigation of reported injuries
over the next three years. However, this target
must be taken seriously: it should not be viewed
as merely 'aspirational'. If resources are not
currently available to allow the HSE to make this
improvement, they must be provided. |
| 30 |
We
also received views on specific aspects of the
HSE's approach to investigations and prosecutions. |
| 31. |
Given
the very low proportion of reported injuries
investigated by the HSE, we were interested
in how it determines which accidents deserve
to be investigated. The Director General of
the HSE told us that a decision to investigate
was based on a number of criteria relating to
:
-
the extent of the breach of the law;
-
the severity of the harm done;
-
the company's track record;
-
whether an investigation would produce lessons
that could be applied elsewhere or would be
a useful deterrent;
-
the level of public concern; and
-
where appropriate, the likelihood of a successful
prosecution.
This
was expanded upon in supplementary evidence
provided by the HSE.
|
| 32. |
The HSE made it clear that it was not its intention
to investigate every accident, primarily due to
"diminishing returns" and because there
were other, perhaps more effective, ways of getting
the message across. However, other witnesses did
not agree with this policy. The Centre for Corporate
Accountability argued that injuries or deaths
should be treated with the same urgency and seriousness
as other crimes and should not be afforded greater
leniency simply because they occurred in a workplace.[52]
Or as Mr Dalton, a health and safety professional
and author of a number of books on the subject,
put it, "why should being killed by a brick
be less of a crime inside the workplace than out?".
|
| 33. |
Witnesses
pointed out that public concern about the level
of investigations of injuries was increasing.
Partly in response to this, the HSE has decided
to look again at a large sample of accidents which
were reported but not selected for investigation.
The purpose of the exercise, the HSE told us,
was to establish whether the existing investigation
criteria had been properly applied and the extent
of non-investigation in circumstances when the
Commission's and Executive's policies would require
investigation to take place. The results of the
review are included in the HSE's supplementary
evidence. |
| 34. |
We
welcome the HSE's review of investigation criteria
as we are concerned that there are potentially
many injuries which it should have investigated.
We are pleased that the HSE intends to re-open
those cases where the original decision not to
investigate was judged to be wrong. |
| 35. |
However,
we continue to have some concerns about how the
criteria which determine which injuries will be
investigated, are applied by HSE inspectors. Decisions
in the past appear to have been unduly dictated
by availability of resources. While the HSE needs
to operate within its resource limitations, we
believe that it should develop more detailed guidance
for inspectors. In particular, more thought should
be given to a) how to 'weight' the criteria, since
some should surely have more influence than others
and b) whether some categories of very serious
injuries should automatically trigger an investigation
in the same way that fatalities do. Such a system
would mean that decisions on whether to investigate
would be more rigorously based and more transparent
which would ultimately lead to a greater consistency
in application between inspectors. We urge the
HSE to use its review to address these issues. |
| 36. |
We
are also concerned about those cases where the
HSE fails to investigate an injury and an individual
is subsequently successful in bringing a civil
case against an employer. We recommend that
the HSE provide a list of such cases in their
annual report, identifying the lessons learnt
and the action taken, to ensure that in the
future such cases will be investigated. We recommend
that, unless there is evidence that the HSE
is responding to this concern, the Government
consider taking action against the HSE.
|
