Proactive inspection cuts



The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which oversaw health and safety reforms including targeting and reducing inspections under the Coalition government, set out the decline in proactive inspections carried out by the HSE in its March 2015 report, A final progress report on implementation of health and safety reforms. This showed that the number had fallen from 33,000 in 2010-11 to 22,000 planned in 2014-15.
The current HSE business plan (see pages 27-28) includes plans for only 20,000 proactive visits this year.


Proactive inspections are no longer likely in the following sectors: agriculture, quarries, and health and social care. The DWP explained that the reason for withdrawing unannounced inspections from these sectors is because they are “unlikely to be effective” at maintaining health and safety standards.


Proactive inspections have been abolished altogether in the following sectors, described by the DWP as “low risk”: textiles, clothing, footwear, light engineering, electrical engineering, the entire transport sector (including air, road, haulage and docks), local authority-administered education, electricity generation and postal and courier services.



Professor Steve Tombs told safety reps and branch officers from the Communication Workers Union that over the period from 2003-04 to 2014-15, inspections by the HSE’s field operations directorate fell by 69% while preventative health and safety inspections by local authority environmental health officers fell by a massive 96%.