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.

The latest TUC biennial survey of safety reps (2014) indicates that there has been a decline in inspection levels by health and safety enforcement agencies in the last two years:

• there was a small increase in the proportion of respondents saying that their workplace had never, as far as they knew, been inspected by a health and safety inspector (47% compared with 45% in 2012);

• there was a general increase in the period since workplaces were last inspected. On top of those reporting no inspection, 13% said the last inspection was more than three years ago (compared with 10% who reported this in 2012);

• just 15% said their workplace was last inspected between one and three years ago (compared with 16% in 2012) and only 25% said it had been inspected within the last 12 months (compared with 28% in 2012); and

• the survey found that manufacturing was the only sector in which a majority (52%) of safety representatives knew of an inspection in the last 12 months.

Even in construction, only 41% said there had been an inspection in the past year and more than one in three had never known there to be an inspection.

The full report, Focus on health and safety: Trade union trends survey, October 2014, can be found at: www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/HealthandSafetySurvey2014.pdf