In a move which we suspected might come to pass some years ago it has been announced that health and safety enforcement may change for smaller businesses.
During July 2016 the HSE ran a consultation on health and safety enforcement allocation. Chiefly, it looked at the role of the local authorities. A range of options were considered, ranging from completely absorbing the LAs’ regulatory powers for health and safety, to allocating them greater duties.
This is something which we discussed on our Breakfast Club sessions for clients and on this blog some years ago. We believe that this is likely to come to pass and the reason will be to bring the lucrative Fee for Intervention (FFI) scheme into play for smaller businesses.
Passing the enforcement role to HSE from overworked EHO’s achieves three goals of the government as we see it;
- It eases the burden on councils at a time when their budgets are under stress from central government funding;
- It enables the introduction of Fee for Intervention (fee based enforcement) for the remainder of UK workplaces enabling it to reach smaller businesses and drive in additional revenue;
- The current situation for sectors such as the motor trade / motor vehicle repair are split untidily between HSE and the LA’s, this change would enable a simpler co-ordinated approach to this type of business which currently falls between HSE and FFI fines and the LA EHO’s and no FFI.
Likely timescales
So, when is this likely to happen? Well, nothing in government moves quickly and so we won’t see any update on the consultation until 2017 with any changes happening in late 2017. However, we do think a change is on the way and HSE are recruiting, watch this space…
