MPs Recommend Giving UK Local Authorities Power To Charge Employers For Health And Safety Enforcement Action

There has been a general decline in health and safety inspection and enforcement by local authorities since 2010 principally due to reduced funding and competing priorities, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Occupational Safety and Health (APPGOSH). According to their recent report, "Local Authorities and Health and Safety":

the overall number of inspections and other interventions by local authorities fell by 65% between 2010 and 2016; the number of full-time local authority health and safety inspectors fell by nearly 47% between 2010 and 2017; and the number of enforcement notices issued by local authorities fell by 64% between 2010 and 2016/7. However, one of their proposals, the extension of the Fees For Intervention regime (FFI) to local authorities, is likely to prove unpopular with employers, given the experiences of those sectors regulated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Challenging Assumptions

In the report, APPGOSH challenges the assumption that workplaces which are regulated by local authorities (as opposed to the HSE), such as offices, shops, warehouses, and pubs and clubs, necessarily carry a lower health and safety risk. The report points to the high rates of injury and illness in warehouses, and of occupational disease in offices (stress), supermarkets (musculoskeletal disorders), and pubs (violence). According to the report, it is not the case that smarter regulation is taking place because, whilst the number of inspections and enforcement notices has more than halved, over the same period, the number of people being injured in workplaces has remained more or less constant and evidence suggests that there has been an increase in illnesses since 2010. Although occupational diseases may attract less regulatory attention than workplace injuries, the report states that they are a far bigger cause of ill-health and notes that they often do not manifest themselves in symptoms until years after the initial cause. In fact, the number of actual health and safety inspections by local authorities may be lower than official figures suggest, because, according to data collected by the HSE, visits for other purposes (for example, public health or licensing) are sometimes recorded as health and safety inspections.

The Role of the HSE

The report notes that the HSE now directs the health and safety enforcement activity of local authorities and requires them to only make pro-active inspections in very limited...