Workplace inspections



The possibility of an unannounced visit from a safety enforcement body is one of the main ways of encouraging employers to meet the basic requirements of health and safety legislation before an accident happens. Unions and safety campaigners have long been concerned about the decline in the number of workplace safety inspections carried out by external regulators.


In April 2017, general union Unite revealed that HSE inspector numbers had fallen by a quarter since 2010. The union used a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to obtain figures showing that the number of frontline inspectors had fallen by a staggering 25%, from 1,311 in 2010 to just 980 by the end of 2016. 



The latest TUC biennial survey of safety reps (2016) found that nearly half (46%) of safety reps said their workplaces have never been inspected by a health and safety inspector, as far as they know, including more than 80% of construction sites. Less than one in four reps (24%) said that there had been an inspection at their workplace within the last 12 months. Manufacturing is the only sector in which a majority (57%) of safety representatives said there had been an inspection in the last 12 months and in the hazardous area of construction, only one of the six safety representatives responding (17%) said there had been an inspection in the past year, with three saying there had never been one, as far as they knew.


TUC head of health and safety Hugh Robertson said: “The vast majority of workplaces are now exempt from proactive enforcement visits.” In addition, health and safety enforcement is not keeping pace with changes in the nature of work (see page 14).


The results of the survey can be found in the 2016 TUC report, Focus on health and safety, which can be found on the TUC website (https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/focusonhealthsafetyreport.pdf).