The need for stronger regulations

The TUC has called for all employers to be required to have safety representatives if they employ more than 10 workers and for larger employers to be required to set up safety committees. Where there are lots of different employers operating out of the same workplace, or if the employer has lots of small sites, it says that unions should be able to appoint roving health and safety representatives to cover all the workers. It also wants a legal right for health and safety representatives to call in the enforcement authorities if an employer fails to act on their concerns.(Also see the TUC guide Safety representatives: getting more than the minimum on pages 58-59).

The HSE research report, Measuring the effect of health and safety advisers and roving safety representatives in agriculture (RR417), assessed the effect of health and safety input from trade union-appointed roving safety representatives (RSRs) and independent health and safety advisers (safety advisers). One of its findings was that farms “demonstrated real improvements in health and safety management terms as a result of the RSR visits”. The report is available on the Worker Involvement pages of the HSE website.