27 Recommendations for the Health & Safety Executive

Government departments are subject to regular review and recently the Department for Work and Pensions published the findings of their latest review of the work of the HSE.

Overall this latest review found the HSE is a well-respected and well-structured organisation that fulfils its statutory objectives effectively, however a number of recommendations were made. Most of the recommendations concern how the HSE is rum internally and how it interacts with other government departments.

A smaller number of recommendations do concern the HSE’s relationships with the wider world. In particular there were recommendations that:

• The HSE should continue to develop and enhance its interventions to maximise its impact on work-related ill-health.
• HSE should review its risk appetite in prosecutions and consider taking on more challenging prosecutions, in line with existing prosecution and enforcement guidance, when there is benefit in doing so.
• HSE should explore opportunities for expansion of the use of cost recovery in certain sectors, building on the lessons learned from Fee for Intervention to ensure clear objectives

So can we expect more prosecutions and more fees? Well the report does note that by 2019/20 they plan a £7million increase per annuum in cost recovery income including £2m from COMAH (Control Of Major Accident Hazards), £2m from FFI and £3m from ensuring full recovery of costs in prosecution cases and new regimes.

The review report and full details of the recommendations can be found on the Gov.UK website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-and-safety-executive-tailored-review