health and safety enforcement and primary authority
One of the recommendations contained in Professor
Löfstedt's report, Reclaiming health and safety for all: An
independent review of health and safety regulation, was that
legislation should be “changed to give HSE the authority to direct
all local authority health and safety inspection and enforcement
activity, in order to ensure that it is consistent and targeted
towards the most risky workplaces”. In addition, the Report
recommended that the HSE should also be the Primary Authority for
multi-site national organisations.
These recommendations would appear to be contrary
to the Government’s stated localism agenda and also take no account
of primary authority agreements for businesses, such as food
companies that would normally cover both health and safety and
food safety.
In their response to the Report, the Government
indicated that, while they fully supported the overall objectives
of the recommendation, they were also aware that in attempting to
address the deficiencies of the current system they must not create
an even more centralised approach that was further removed from
local businesses and communities. However, it was necessary for
local government to take a more consistent and proportionate
approach to enforcement. Consequently, it was intended that HSE
would work with local government and business to develop a shared
national code that would be binding and enforceable. At the same
time it was considered that there remained an important role for
local inspectors to use their knowledge and experience to engage
with businesses across a range of regulatory issues. Overall the
Government believes that strengthening HSE's policy role for all
aspects of health and safety enforcement will deliver better
targeted inspections and deliver greater consistency for
business.
The Primary Authority Scheme allows businesses
which operate across more than one local authority to establish a
partnership with a single local authority (the primary authority)
who then liaise with other relevant councils to ensure they are
consistent in terms of inspection and enforcement action. In its
response the Government considers that this scheme has gone some
way towards developing a framework for addressing the problem of
inconsistency in health and safety enforcement across local
authority boundaries. However, the scheme could be improved.
At the time the Government published its response
to the Löfstedt Report, plans to improve the Primary Authority
Scheme were out for consultation. This has now been completed and
the Government has announced that it intends to adopt
recommendations in three areas:
- strengthen inspection plans to deliver earned
recognition for business
- extend the scheme to include other types of
businesses and those that provide advice to businesses (such as
trade associations), and
- extend the scope of the scheme.
The Government response to the Löfstedt Report
does not specifically endorse the recommendation that the HSE
should be the primary authority for multi-site operations. It does,
however, expect the HSE to work closely with the Local Better
Regulation Office (which will shortly be reconfigured as the Better
Regulation Delivery Office within BIS) who operates the Primary
Authority Scheme, “to ensure that Primary Authority can help
deliver reductions in burdens, and increased consistency of
approach, in line with HSE policy”. The issues relating to
businesses requiring more than one primary authority if the HSE
becomes the primary authority for health and safety do not appear
to have been addressed by the Government.
