Workplace inspections

The possibility of an unannounced visit from an external regulator 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 (2012) suggested worrying levels of inspection by health and safety enforcement agencies:

• less than half (45%) of reps said that, as far as they know, a health and safety inspector had never visited their workplace;

• a further one in 10 said that the last inspection was more than three years ago and another 16% said that it was between one and three years ago; and

• only 28% said that their workplace had been inspected in the last 12 months.