In the first two months of the Health & Safety Executive’s £124-an-hour Fee for Intervention (FFI) scheme, more than 40% of the charges imposed went to construction companies.
The figures obtained by law firm DWF under the Freedom of Information Act show that 373 construction firms faced FFI bills between the introduction of the Scheme at the start of October and the end of November.
The Intervention Fee was introduced by HSE as a way of compensating for a swingeing budget cut imposed by the Government.
The Government has said it intends to reduce red tape surrounding health & safety. Whether imposing a Fee is reducing paperwork is a moot point, although the HSE points out it only charges if it finds regulations are being contravened.
By 30 November, 903 firms across all sectors had had FFI time recorded against them but the biggest single sector was construction.
And it might be even worse than the figures suggest. Transient construction work is recorded against the head office address for the relevant duty holder, meaning that the number of construction sites at which an FFI time has been recorded could easily be higher than the figures suggest.
This clearly indicates the construction industry needs to be vigilant. At least in the first two months, it ended up paying a disproportionate number of the Fees for Intervention.
FFI is imposed if the HSE decides to notify a business in writing that a safety breach has occurred. More Fees follow if the HSE decides to follow up the notification. The business is charged for HSE’s time spent identifying and investigating the breach and ‘assisting’ the firm to put things right.
From the moment FFI is triggered, every minute of time the HSE spends on the matter becomes chargeable to the business. What is more, if the HSE engages a third party expert to assist, the firm will be charged the full extent of the third party’s fees, which could be substantially more than £124-an-hour.
Fees could run into thousands of pounds, yet businesses have no control over the time or expenses incurred by the HSE and only discover the extent of their liability once they receive the HSE’s invoice.
Estimations of the costs that businesses are likely to face are wide ranging. Some suggest they might start from £750 for a letter, increasing to £1,500 where an enforcement notice is served. However, such rough estimates are unlikely to be much help to businesses, which will face the uncertainty of not knowing how much time the HSE has spent on their file until they receive the invoice.
HSE does not need to convict a business to issue an FFI invoice. It does not even need to charge a business with an offence before the Fee is imposed.
If a company feels it did not contravene the law, it has 21 days to challenge the imposition of the FFI. If it is still not happy with the response to that challenge it has a further 21 days in which to lodge a dispute. But don’t forget, the longer the HSE spends on the case the more your bill will increase if it wins.