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The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents responds to a new health and safety framework, unveiled by the Department for Work and Pensions. RoSPA believes the wider health and safety community has an even more critical preventative and advisory role to play due to a shift in regulatory emphasis.
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The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents believes the wider health and safety community has an even more critical preventative and advisory role to play due to a shift in regulatory emphasis announced yesterday by Chris Grayling, the Minister for Work and Pensions.
Outlining a series of steps, he said that health and safety inspections would be cut by at least a third, with future automatic inspections focusing on "high risk" locations, such as major energy facilities, and on "rogue employers". Such rogue employers would have to pay the cost of investigations into their activities if they showed them to be in breach of health and safety law. A review of all existing health and safety law, with a view to scrapping unnecessary measures, was also announced, as was a new online advice package for small and "low risk" employers. All the measures are contained within "Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone", published by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Roger Bibbings, RoSPA's occupational safety adviser, said: "Bearing down on over-zealousness when dealing with trivial risks and eradicating red tape are echoed again in today's announcements but we must not forget that there are still major health and safety issues to be tackled, including work-related health damage which is now accounting for many more lives lost than injury due to accidents. The Health and Safety Executive is having to refocus its efforts to operate within a budget that is being reduced by 35 per cent by 2014-15. We welcome the Government's intention to concentrate enforcement on cowboy employers and to charge them, where necessary, for the cost of this work.
"We also want to feed into the review which the Government has announced of the architecture of health and safety regulation. The number of separate regulations has grown over the years, although we continue to take the view that there is nothing essentially wrong with the Health and Safety at Work Act which lies at the heart of health and safety law and has proportionality built in. However, we fully agree that, where possible, the structure of both regulatory duties and accompanying guidance should be simplified so they are easier to understand and apply. We also agree with the Government that where employers cannot manage health and safety in-house they should seek competent external advice. Not enough businesses are doing this and the new Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register, which went 'live' yesterday, is designed to help businesses and organisations to find the advice they need.
"These moves and the greater focus on getting tougher with a small number of flagrant wrong-doers are important, but we must also ensure that the majority of non-compliant businesses - those which are well-motivated but simply lack knowledge and understanding - get help to understand what they need to do to improve. With a greater emphasis at the HSE on reactive enforcement and fewer resources available for its awareness-raising role, there is now an even stronger case for it to pool its resources and work in partnership with bodies like RoSPA, local health and safety groups and many others in the health and safety community that stand ready and willing to help. The new online advice package will be useful as a starting point but harnessing the expertise and energy of the third sector and other community groups will be critical if we are to sustain the significant progress in occupational accident and ill health prevention that has come over many decades.
"Besides the unquantifiable human costs they impose on victims and families, work-related injuries and ill health impose a massive financial cost on businesses and the wider economy. In 2009/10, 28.5 million days were lost; 23.4 million due to work-related ill health and 5.1 million due to workplace injury. The cost to society as a whole of workplace injury and ill health has been put at around £30billion - nearly three per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Reducing this huge burden will go a long way towards helping the country's economic recovery."
RoSPA, a charity that has worked at the heart of accident prevention in the UK for more than 90 years, will continue to work to foster a strong culture of health and safety - not only at work, but also in the home and in the wider community - based on sound risk assessment and balanced and proportionate approach to risk control. It is committed to helping to develop better safety and risk literacy at all levels, with a strong focus on risk education as part of the national curriculum.
Contact Information
Jo Bullock
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA)
28 Calthorpe Road
Birmingham
B15 1RP
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