HSE Shocking Failure Costs Lives Says UCATT

There is growing concern that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is failing at its job, the Observer newspaper has reported. HSE has reduced the number of its inspectors by around 25 per cent in five years from 916 to 680.

Firms on average face an HSE inspection just once every 14½ years. Meanwhile the number of policy officers the HSE employs has more than doubled from 38 to 87, the paper reported. Senior MPs are concerned that the HSE last year under spent its budget by £12m and fear an imminent relocation out of London will see it lose valuable experts.

Alan Ritchie, general secretary of the construction union UCATT, commented: "The shocking failure of the HSE has literally cost the lives of members of my industry. It is imperative that someone gets a hold of this organisation and ensures that funds are spent on front line inspections. That is what saves lives and prevents accidents."

The Observer report in last Sunday's edtion (11th May) said HSE's decision to stop publishing its annual 'Offences and Penalties' report three years ago has resulted in a paucity of information, its absence limiting the scope for independent analysis and interrogation of HSE enforcement statistics.

This of course comes hot on the heels of a damning report by the Department of Work and Pensions into the role of the Health and Safety Commission and the Health and Safety Executive in regulating workplace health and safety. As reported by Unionsafety last month, the report concurs with Trade Union’s opinions and raises the same concerns over a lack of funding for a body, which is said to be "spreading itself too thinly”.

Next month MP's will debate a private member's bill aiming to raise what has been described as the derisory level of fines levied on firms guilty of serious breaches.

But the HSE are clearly in denial as this quote in the Observer from Geoffrey Podger: “We do not take the view that the rise in the fatalities is related to a fall in inspections, or related to inspector numbers.”

The Government is of course facing in two directions at once: on the one hand it claims to support the need for good, sensible, health and safety regulation and enforcement, but on the other plays to the CBI gallery by refusing to implement stringent enforcement, increasing the budget of the HSE and more recently going on about voluntary self regulation within the business comminity as a way of removing ‘Red Tape’ from around the neck of business.

Many commentators within the trade union movement and the H&S community feel that the Government stands back as the lack of enforcement and prosecution by the HSE due to resource problems reinforces a society and business environment that sees health and safety as a joke and mere ‘Red Tape’ and part of a ‘Nanny State’.

In the meantime lives are lost, people are maimed for life and criminal behavioiur from some in the business communty allows them to get away with putting profit before the lives of their workforce.

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