From next year, HSE plan to charge you a fee if they have to give anything from advice to a Prohibition Notice, giving you yet another incentive to take health & safety seriously.

The Government is cutting the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) budget by 35%. But if you think that’s good news because there will be fewer inspectors adding to your already overburdened workload, think again because HSE is coming up with interesting new ways of getting companies that break the rules to make up the difference, which gives HSE inspectors every incentive to seek out miscreants.

There is the promise of a beneficial side to the changes in that it is proposed to make a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ companies and remove some of the burden from companies that take a responsible attitude to health & safety and don’t break the rules.

An HSE spokesperson told NSS: “HSE has been asked to deliver savings of at least 35% in Government funding by the end of the 2010 Spending Review period (by 2014-15). In line with the rest of Government, HSE is looking at how it can work more efficiently and deliver better value for money to the taxpayer while still ensuring effective services.”

In July, some idea of what that might mean was published in a consultation document. From this first detailed look at how the new system might operate it is clear that the aim is to recover costs from those who break health & safety laws. So, far from there being less vigilance from the HSE there could well be more as they seek to increase their revenue.

And as breaking the law is going to become more expensive as a result of the changes there will be a greater incentive on businesses to make sure they don’t.

The first and most essential step to complying with the law is to make sure risk assessments have been carried out, written down and actioned. There is a legal requirement to do this and if you don’t you will have fallen at the first hurdle – and the HSE clock will already be running on what it is going to cost you.

Members of Stone Federation Great Britain will have a helping hand on getting it right because the Federation plans to produce all the health & safety documentation necessary for its members businesses so they can rest assured that, as long as they use it, they have complied with the law.

The HSE’s three-month consultation on how cost recovery for intervention will operate is coming to an end this month. But the underlying principles have already been agreed with the Government.

The aim is to start the new scheme from April next year. Gordon MacDonald, HSE’s programme director, explains: “The Government has agreed that it is right that those who break the law (rather than the public purse) should pay their fair share of the costs to put things right.

“These proposals provide a further incentive for people to operate within the law, levelling the playing field between those who comply and those who don’t. Compliant firms will not pay a penny in intervention fees.

“HSE already recovers its costs in a range of industries and we have considerable experience of making these schemes work.”

Although the changes themselves put no new health & safety duties on businesses, they do, for the first time, place a duty on HSE to recover the costs of their interventions.

Costs would be recovered if, for example, during an inspection or investigation a material breach of health & safety regulations is discovered and formal action is taken. Fees would continue to be applied up to the point where HSE’s intervention (they like to call it ‘support’ for the business) in putting matters right has concluded.

HSE currently estimate that they will charge £133 per hour for their support, with the costs of any specialist services needed (dust or vibration level measurements, perhaps) also being passed on.

The changes will be introduced through an amendment to the Health & Safety (Fees) Regulations 2010.

And these are not the only changes taking place at the HSE as they seek to achieve the budget cuts being imposed on them.

On Monday 12 September new accident reporting arrangements came into force under Riddor (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases & Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995).

Now, only fatalities and major injuries and incidents can be reported by phone to the HSE. All other work-related injuries and incidents that come under Riddor have to be reported on one of the seven forms you can find on HSE’s website (www.hse.gov.uk).

Commenting on the new arrangements, Trevor Carlile, the HSE’s Director of Strategy, says: “This should not be a significant change for many, as more than half of reportable injuries are already notified to HSE through the website.

“The new forms are intuitive and quick and easy to complete. The most important thing is that there will still be somebody at the end of the phone to assist those who are reporting a traumatic event that has resulted in a death or major injury.”

The HSE’s Infoline telephone service also finished at the end of September. It provided a basic information service to callers. If you call it now you will be directed to the HSE’s website.

Some changes have been made to the website to coincide with the closure of Infoline that are intended to make it clearer what the HSE does and does not do and what it does and does not require you to do.

The ‘question & answer’ sections for the most frequent health & safety enquiries have been expanded, so you will have more to trawl through to find what you need to know but are more likely to find what you are looking for in the end.

Trevor Carlile says the HSE’s website is already overwhelmingly the most popular option for accessing health & safety information. He says the HSE is confident their web services can be efficient and effective… and, of course, are “a fraction of the cost per contact compared with telephone services”.

He adds: “We’ll continue to make improvements to make the website as intuitive and easy to use as possible.”

There is also more health & safety advice on the Government’s website for businesses www.businesslink.gov.uk, which is gradually joining up all the information available from the websites of various government departments and quangos into one increasingly useful resource.

HSE remind companies that health & safety regulations are law. They are not discretionary or voluntary. They are statutory. Being convicted of breaking them leads to a criminal record, whether it is a company or an individual who is prosecuted. The record of the conviction is posted on the HSE website and the record can be found by entering the name of the company involved.

And let’s not forget: the regulations are there to protect people. They might seem like an imposition when your busy schedule is interrupted by someone wanting to check your paperwork and ensure your premises or site are safe, but they don’t seem so trivial when someone loses an arm or a leg or a life.

You should not underestimate the devastating effect on morale a bad accident can have on a business, especially a small one where everyone knows everyone else.

Proprietors and managers cannot appreciate beforehand the impact it will have on them personally, as well as on everyone else in the company, especially when a long, drawn-out enquiry leading to a court case that can be years after the event continually reminds you of what happened. And the owner, as the guiding hand of the business, is blamed for it.

Even after a court case it will not be over, as there will probably be claims for compensation that will drag on as your insurance company tries to minimise the payout it has to make, which will exacerbate bad feelings.

Other employees could be drawn in as witnesses. It will become the overriding topic of conversation in the company. Your best people might leave because they don’t like the atmosphere. Customers will be less keen to contact you. The potential disruption cannot be exaggerated.

Neither can the cost. Fines and costs awarded against companies for health & safety breaches are rising. The maximum penalty possible under health & safety legislation depends on the offence but Magistrates can now impose a maximum penalty for failure to comply with an improvement or prohibition notice of a £20,000 fine and / or one year in prison. A Crown Court can impose an unlimited fine and / or two years in prison.

The police might decide a work incident is serious enough to warrant charges of manslaughter or grievous bodily harm.

Last year the Sentencing Guidelines Council published guidelines on the penalties for the new corporate manslaughter offence and other health & safety offences which lead to the death of an employee.

It said punitive and significant fines should be imposed both to deter and to reflect public concern at avoidable loss of life. Fines for companies and organisations found guilty of corporate manslaughter could be millions of pounds and the Sentencing Guidelines Council said they should seldom be less than £500,000. For other health & safety offences that cause death, fines from £100,000 up should be imposed, said the Council, even if such fines would lead to the collapse of the company they were being imposed upon.

Penalties in non-fatal health & safety breaches have been increased by the Health & Safety Offences Act 2008. Many relatively minor offences previously attracting a moderate fine now result in significantly greater fines and even imprisonment – and the Health & Safety Executive is showing no hesitation in using its powers to prosecute.

The fines and costs imposed by courts are not the only expense involved in a health & safety prosecution, either. The disruption to a business of having its senior management tied up in this way, especially when a single proprietor runs the business, can lose a lot of business. Compensation claims will be paid by insurers but the insurers will punish the company afterwards by increasing the cost of cover. And now there will also be the costs charged by the HSE for the time they spend ‘supporting’ the business before, during and after prosecutions.

On the other hand, prosecutions as a result of deaths might not take quite so long to reach court in future as more of them will take place before inquests are held as a result of changes to a key agreement between those who investigate and prosecute work-related deaths.

The revised protocol, which took effect from the start of this month (October), will allow prosecution before the inquest is held where manslaughter or homicide charges are not relevant – if it is considered appropriate and in the interests of justice.

The changes have been made for the benefit of the bereaved, rather than companies, but everyone should benefit from the speedier resolution of such cases.

A life in a wheelchair: the price of saving a few minutes

Jason Anker was rushing to finish a job. The ladder he was on was not tied to the building. He fell just three metres. He will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair reflecting on the decision to save a few minutes.

He told his story last month (September) to an audience of 400 construction bosses at Haydock Park Racecourse in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, during a Working Well Together event (Working Well Togther is a partnership between HSE and the construction industry which aims to improve health & safety in the sector).

Jason, the father-of-two who has been left paralysed by the fall, is urging firms in the construction industry to make sure they work safely.

He was just 24 when he fell. He was working for a small roofing firm in the Midlands. He is now 43 and was keen to be involved in an event that was trying to make sure what happened to him does not happen to anyone else.

“The job had overrun so we were rushing to finish it quickly, which meant risks were taken,” he told his audience.

“The ladder I used wasn’t tied to the building and slipped away as I was climbing back down. I remember I couldn’t feel my legs when I was lying on the ground and the doctors basically ended up telling me I’d never walk again.

“I was absolutely devastated. I just thought something like that would never happen to me.

“I think there’s a temptation for small construction firms to take risks if they’ve got a deadline to meet and another job to get to. But it’s important they take on board that what happened to me could happen to their employees as well.”

There were 42 construction workers killed at work in 2009/10 – that’s a quarter of all workplace deaths. More than 3,000 construction workers suffered major injuries.

As well as working safely at height, the safety event at Haydock Park Racecourse included practical demonstrations on harness safety and covered other health & safety issues, including asbestos and other dust-related diseases (such as silicosis, so prevalent among stonemasons), power tool vibration injuries (also common among masons) and working in confined spaces.

Mike Cross, HSE’s Head of Construction in the North West, said: “It’s vital we’re able to get the message out to small construction firms that the risks their workers face are real.

“It’s great that Jason was able to help us do that.

“If the ladder he was using had been tied to the building then it’s unlikely he would have fallen. It would have taken just a few minutes and would have meant Jason would still be able to walk today.

“We hope construction bosses and

self-employed workers will continue to come to free events like this one and take advantage of the advice available to make sure they stay safe.”