At the start of this month (October) accident reporting under RIDDOR was simplified as part of the on-going removal of red tape from health & safety.

With two HSE purges on refurbishment sites this year – the latest last month (September) – some smaller contractors believe they are being used as a soft target by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) to fill the 35% hole left in its budget by government cuts.

They believe they are being unfairly targeted for the £124-an-hour Fees for Intervention (FFI) that the HSE introduced in October last year. The fees are charged if the HSE decides it is necessary to write to a company about a health & safety infringement or to take any action, such as issuing an improvement notice or ordering work to stop.

In the first purge on refurbishment sites at the start of this year, inspectors visited 2,363 sites across the country. They issued 631 enforcement notices across 433 sites for poor practices that they said could have put workers at risk. Of those, 451 were stop notices.

The first FFI bills started landing on company directors’ desks at the end of January. The Health & Safety Executive said then that the sum being claimed from FFIs issued in the first two months of the scheme up to Christmas totalled £727,644. It said 40% of the 903 companies sent bills were construction companies – making the sector the largest single group receiving FFIs.

Since then the value of FFI invoices raised by HSE has risen to more than £5.5million and the proportion of them that have gone to the construction sector has fallen to 27%.

It had been feared that the number of FFI-earning interventions from the HSE would increase following the introduction of the Fee as the HSE sought to recoup the £90million it will have lost from its budget by the end of its 2014/15 accounting year.

But that does not appear to have happened. According to figures from HSE, from 1 October 2012 (when FFI started) to 31 May this year, HSE issued 4,067 Improvement Notices and 2,161 Prohibition Notices. In the corresponding period a year earlier, it issued 3,908 Improvement Notices and 2,428 Prohibition Notices.

To avoid the HSE being incentivised to increase its budget by issuing a lot of FFI-earning letters and notices, the Government has capped the amount of money from FFI that it can keep, although it still has some way to go to reach the 2013/14 cap of £17million and the cap for the year after that rises to £23million.

The Government budgets for the HSE clearly anticipate that level of contribution from FFI and the Government would probably be happy for a little extra to be raised to add to its own coffers.

Simon Longbottom, HSE head of construction policy & sector, points out the fees are only charged on companies that do not comply with health & safety legislation and can be avoided simply by not contravening the regulations.

“HSE’s fees for intervention places no new responsibilities on business. It simply lets HSE recover its costs from those firms found to be putting people at risk by breaking health & safety laws. Businesses operating safely and within the law will not pay a fee. Where a business becomes aware of a significant breach, putting it right quickly will minimise their costs.

“It is right that those who break health & safety law, and not the public purse, should pay the costs incurred in making them put matters right.

“The intervention fees also help create a level playing field for business. Employers who cut corners and put the public and workers at risk should not enjoy a competitive advantage over those who invest in doing the right thing.

“We’re putting a lot of effort into making our website and guidance simpler and clearer to understand. Health and safety law is basically about taking reasonable steps to manage a risk you create. A lot of it is just common sense."

Clearly the FFI cap, even if it is reached, is still going to leave a £50million hole in the HSE budget – as it is intended to, because the Government wants to shrink the HSE and remove some of the health & safety burden on business that it believes is restricting economic growth.

HSE says the cuts it is making in order to work within its reduced budget seek, as far as possible, to protect the number of front-line health & safety inspectors. Instead, it is making savings by cutting back office functions, closing some premises, moving people so they share premises and sub-letting space within its premises. It has also reduced staff expenses through smarter travel and the use of video-conferencing rather than travelling to meetings.

Possibly having less health & safety legislation to police will also cut costs. The Government is committed to halving the amount of legislation covering health & safety at work and the move towards that end is continuing.

In its 2012/13 annual report, HSE says it has continued the implementation of an unprecedented level of reform and update to the health & safety system and that close to 88% of HSE’s external guidance, representing more than 740 individual publications, had been reviewed and revised in accordance with the report by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, Director of the King's Centre for Risk Management at King's College, London, in 2011.

Professor Löfstedt conducted an independent review of HSE’s progress in implementing the regulatory reform recommendations contained in his 2011 review and gave a favourable report on progress to date, with virtually all recommendations being either complete or on target for completion.

They include the repeal of one Act of Parliament and revoke 12 instruments (plus a related provision in the Factories Act). These measures are being removed because they have either been overtaken by more up-to-date Regulations, are redundant or do not deliver the intended benefits.

HSE says the removal of these regulations do not compromise health & safety but are intended to make the legislative framework simpler and clearer.

For example, one of the regulations repealed is the Construction (Head Protection) Regulations 1989 that require hard hats to be worn on building sites. But HSE says this does not mean hard hats do not need to be worn on building sites. They do because the Personal Protective Equipment Regulations 1992 have been amended to require it specifically. But there was no need for both sets of regulations.

More changes have been introduced this month (October).

Two more revisions to health & safety regulations took effect from the beginning of this month: The reporting of workplace injuries and the managing of first aid training.

Changes to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases & Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 1995 have been introduced that change reporting requirements.

The main changes are:

• ‘Major injuries’ has been replaced with a shorter list of ‘specified injuries’
• The existing schedule detailing 47 types of industrial disease has been replaced with eight categories of reportable work-related illness
• There are fewer types of ‘dangerous occurrence’ that have to be reported

The changes affect all employers and the self-employed. Information and guidance is available on the HSE website www.hse.gov.uk/riddor

The other change is an amendment of the Health & Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 to remove the requirement for HSE to approve first aid training and qualifications.

Information, including the regulations and guidance for employers, is available on the HSE website at www.hse.gov.uk/firstaid

HSE emphasises that neither change alters the duties or responsibilities already placed on employers.

For example, businesses still have a legal duty to make arrangements to ensure their employees receive immediate attention if they are injured or taken ill at work.

The amendments to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases & Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 1995 do not affect how an incident at work is reported and the criteria that determine whether an incident should be investigated.

HSE is at pains to assure industry in general and particularly higher risk industries such as construction that the changes are simply removing some red tape and in no way mean health & safety should move down the agenda.

HSE is taking action to raise awareness of the continuing need for health & safety compliance – such as the Safety & Health Awareness Day (SHAD) it held in conjunction with Stone Federation Great Britain at APS Masonry’s premises in Oxfordshire in March (see below).

It says it is working with the construction industry, particularly small contractors, to ensure companies understand the continuing need to protect employees.

Judith Hackitt, who Chairs HSE, spoke in May about the reduction of health & safety regulations. She said: “We’ve been simplifying and removing outdated or unnecessary regulation, something we were doing before the recent reviews but there now is a fresh impetus extending beyond the regulations into guidance, codes of practice and our approach to inspection and interventions.

“The overarching goal we’re working toward is to make it easier for businesses to do what is required without changing the high standards of workplace health & safety.

“HSE’s purpose remains the same – reducing work-related death, injury and ill health. The approach to reactive inspections and the criteria which determine when these inspections take place has not changed.”

Judith Hackett concluded: “Our industry and our business is about enabling people to make things happen while ensuring that the work going on does not kill, injure or make people ill. Let’s all get on with making that happen.”

In the stone industry there is extra help available if you are a member of Stone Federation Great Britain. Jane Buxey, Chief Executive of the Federation, says members have the comfort of a free 24-hour Health & Safety Hotline they can use to consultant health & safety expert Peter Robertshaw if they have any doubts about their workshops or sites.

Peter Robertshaw mans the Stone Federation health & safety helpline. “Any queries, any worries that members have, we can help them and that’s totally free. If they need additional support, we are there for them.”

Getting the health & safety message

Perhaps it was that £124-an-hour Fee for Intervention (FFI) that persuaded so many people to attend the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) and Stone Federation SHAD (Safety & Health Awareness Day) held at APS Masonry's workshops in Oxford on 20 March. So many stone contractors turned up that one session had to be turned into two to accommodate them all.

It had been anticipated that around 30 people would attend but more than 70 booked and others simply turned up on the day, which created difficulties for the organisers because the food provided had to stretch. However, nobody was turned away and in the end 90 people listened to the presentations by the Health & Safety Executive experts.

It had been two years since the previous SHAD and HSE had introduced the Fees for Intervention (FFI) in the interim (starting in October a year ago).

The main presentations were given by specialist noise and vibration HSE Inspector Andrew Thompson, Health &Safety Laboratory scientist Russell Atkinson (Silica dust exposure) and specialist HSE human factors inspector Ed Milnes (materials handling).

“It's really good to see that the stone industry wants to take health & safety seriously and wants to come to an event like this,” Ian Smart, from the Manufacturing Sector of HSE who co-ordinated the event, told Natural Stone Specialist at the SHAD. “In this current climate it reflects the importance they attach to health & safety.”

He pointed out that health & safety is not just an administrative burden. “The important thing is that people are able to go home at the end of a day's work without injuries and without having suffered any harm to their health.”

Why H&S matters

The construction industry claimed the lives of 39 of its workers in the year to the end of March. That is a quarter of all work related deaths in Britain. Five members of the public also died on building sites.

Possibly because of the currently subdued level of activity in construction, the death rate in the industry for the year was 26% lower than the five-year average figure of 53, although the rate of fatalities has also fallen, to 1.9 per 100,000 workers compared with a five-year average of 2.3.

The number of workers across all industries killed in work related incidents in Britain has fallen, Health & Safe­ty Executive statistics published in July show. A total of 148 workers were fatally injured compared with 172 in the previous year.

The overall rate of fatal injury dropped to 0.5 per 100,000 workers – 17% below the five-year average.

Britain has had one of the lowest rates of fatal injuries to workers in leading industrial nations in Europe consistently for the past eight years.

Judith Hackitt, Chair of HSE, commented when the figures were released: “These figures are being published in the same week as the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha [north sea oil platform] disaster and are a reminder to us all of why health & safety is so important. Although the number of people killed at work has dropped significantly, last year 148 people failed to return home to their loved ones.

“The fact that Britain continues to have one of the lowest levels of workplace fatalities in Europe will be of little consolation to those who lose family members, friends and work colleagues.

“HSE is striving to make health & safety simpler and clearer for people to understand so that more people do what is required to manage the real risks that cause death and serious injury.

“We all have a part to play to ensure people come home safe at the end of the working day. Good leadership, employee engagement and effective risk-management are key to achieving this.”

Across Great Britain there were:

• 118 fatal injuries in England – a rate of 0.5 deaths per 100,000 workers, compared with an average of 144 deaths in the past five years. The year before there were 131 deaths
• 22 fatal injuries in Scotland – a rate of 0.9 deaths per 100,000 workers, compared with an average of 22 deaths in the past five years and an increase from the 19 deaths the year before.
• 8 fatal injuries in Wales – a rate of 0.6 deaths per 100,000 workers, compared with an average of 12 deaths in the past five years and a decrease from the 19 deaths recorded in 2011/12.