Löfstedt proposals on future enforcement strategy

The Löfstedt Review of health and safety regulation recommended a change to enforcement legislation to give the HSE overall authority to direct all local authority health and safety inspection and enforcement activity.

The DWP has not adopted this proposal. Instead it announced that the HSE will be working with local authorities and businesses to “develop a shared national code that is binding and enforceable”. The HSE’s new statutory National Enforcement Code for local authorities came into force on 29 May 2013 and will target proactive council inspections on “higher risk” activities in specified sectors, or when there is intelligence of workplaces putting employees or the public at risk. Checks will continue on poor performers and at sites where there are higher risk activities, such as cooling towers, and buried liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) gas pipes.

If “low-risk” businesses believe they are being unreasonably targeted they will be able to complain to an independent panel, which will investigate and issue a public judgment and the HSE will “work with” local authorities whose targeting of inspections fails to meet the standards set out.

The Environmental Health Officers’ professional body CIEH criticised the tone of a press release announcing the new code. CIEH chief executive, Graham Jukes, said that, while the official announcement referred to inspections being restricted according to risk, it was misleading to say that the code “will see tens of thousands of businesses removed from health and safety inspections which are not justified on a risk basis, including most shops and offices”. The CIEH believes that unless the statement is qualified to indicate that this applies to proactive inspection when there is no local intelligence or evidence to suggest otherwise, proprietors of “most shops and offices” might wrongly believe that they have been exempted from compliance with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

The Code can be found on the HSE website at www.hse.gov.uk/lau/publications/la-enforcement-code.htm