Investigations, prosecutions, enforcement down – and deaths up

Just who does HSE protect?

HSE’s desperately poor safety enforcement record just took a turn for the worse. Now 9 out of 10 major injuries don’t result in an investigation, HSE inspections have hit a new low and the last two years have seen the worst enforcement performance on record. Hazards editor Rory O'Neill says only dangerous employers now have reason to feel safe.

No cash, no teeth, no justice

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors undertook 13,221 fewer inspections last year, a drop of over 24 per cent. Figures obtained by Hazards show HSE’s main inspection section, the Field Operations Division (FOD), recorded just 41,496 inspections on its COIN database in 2006/07, down from 54,717 in 2005/06.

Although a change of recording methods mean the figures are not directly comparable with those for earlier years (Hazards 95), they do show inspections have now fallen dramatically year-on-year since 2002/03 and have reached a new low. While the number of inspections has crashed over the last five years, the number of workplaces covered by HSE has increased by 20 per cent, meaning workplace are only visited about once every 14.5 years, down from once very seven years in 2001/02.

A series of Freedom of Information Act requests from Hazards revealed other evidence of a massive deterioration in the safety oversight provided by HSE.

Its ‘decision reporting forms’ reveal the number of incidents so serious investigation should follow automatically but where no investigation has occurred because of “inadequate resources” has increased from 207 in 2005/05, to 255 in 2005/06 and to 307 in 2006/07 (Hazards 99).

The proportion of reported major injuries that were investigated by HSE has also dropped, down from 13 per cent in 2004/05 to 11 per cent in 2005/06.

Enforcement activity has also plummeted. Final figures for 2005/06 published on the HSE website on 1 November 2007 show HSE prosecuted 1,056 offences that year, down from 1,320 in 2004/05, a fall of 20 per cent. Convictions secured dropped to 840, down from 1,025 in 2004/05, a drop of over 18 per cent. The provisional HSE prosecutions figure for 2006/07 is 1,141, a minor improvement, and the provisional convictions figure rose from 840 to 848. However, the two most recent years represent the worst HSE enforcement performance on record.

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Source: HSE

The total number of enforcement notices issued by HSE fell to 6,593 in 2005/06 from 8,471 in 2004/05, a fall of over 22 per cent. Prohibition notices issued by HSE fell to 2,668 in 2005/06 compared to 3,285 in 2004/05, down almost 18 per cent. Improvement notices fell to 3,952 from 5,186, down almost 24 per cent. After a major effort to reverse the fall in notices, the number issued by HSE in 2006/07 rose to 8,071, but the last two years remain the worst on record.

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Source: HSE

There are serious concerns the enforcement crisis at HSE will worsen, as further funding cuts bite. HSE has already lost over 250 jobs since April 2006 and faces a further 100 job losses in the second half of the financial year. HSE is grappling with the news that the anticipated 15 per cent budget cut by 2011 to meet Treasury efficiency targets may in fact be larger still.

Chancellor Alistair Darling’s announcement that HSE’s parent department DWP would take a 5.6 per cent hit year on year from 2008-2010 was 12 per cent more than the 5 per cent cut it had been led to believe was on the cards.

Since 2002, HSE has lost over 1,000 posts as a result of government spending cuts; HSE union Prospect says the organisation now employs fewer than 3,250 staff, down from over 4,000 when Labour took office.

According to a September 2007 TUC briefing, workplace safety should be a high law enforcement priority, noting “18,000 violent crimes a year require hospital treatment whereas there are 39,000 workplace major injuries – things like amputations, fractures to limbs, serious burns, or injuries requiring at least 24 hours in hospital.”

But as HSE struggled this year to cope with a crippling funding crisis it was pushed into areas of work with no relevance to workers’ health – including taking the lead on and footing the £100,000 bill for the investigation into this summer’s foot and mouth outbreak linked to the Pirbright laboratory near Guildford. Foot and mouth is a non-fatal disease of animals presenting no risk at all to humans.

Mike Macdonald, negotiations officer with HSE inspectors’ union Prospect, said cash-strapped watchdog “cannot meet its public expectations to advise, inspect and enforce workplace health and safety.” He added: “Better funding for the HSE would be good for workers concerned about their safety, employers seeking advice and the taxpayer who meets the costs of higher benefit and insurance because of rising accident rates.”

Hilda Palmer, a spokesperson for the campaign group Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK) commented: “The massive, unacceptable decline in already inadequate policing of health and safety means the workplace is an enforcement-free zone and deaths and injuries will continue to rise.

“Employers cannot be trusted to protect our health and safety without a credible threat that they will be caught and punished, preferably before someone is hurt or killed. FACK will be making it clear to the minister Peter Hain that families of those killed by work will not tolerate this failure of law enforcement and we expect urgent action to police the workplace.”