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Tories to bar HSE inspectors from building sites
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Posted By grim72 I came across this article in Contract Journal which claims that if the Tories get into power they will seek to prevent the HSE from being as active. I wondered what people's thoughts were on this, surely this would open up the gateway for more cowboy operations to be involved within the construction industry? Shadow business secretary Ken Clarke is vowing to curb the powers of the HSE by allowing firms to arrange their own externally audited safety inspections and enabling contractors to bar HSE inspectors from entering their building sites. The article can be found at http://www.contractjourn...-bar-hse-from-sites.html
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Posted By Luke.
"....allowing firms to arrange their own, externally audited inspections and, providing they pass, to refuse entry to official inspectors thereafter."
We all know the standard of some sites, even though the site managers are more than aware they currently run the risk of a HSE inspection... can you imagine how bad they would be if they knew they could refuse an inspection!
The external audit to be arranged... therefore, like quite a few companies, they will raise the standard for the audit and then once the inspector has gone, back to square one.
Why can't they get clever and allow the HSE to randomly visit site AND have to arrange a tough audit as a mandatory requirement?!
As far as i am concerned, by doing this, torries are bringing in a car MOT problem... a piece of paper saying it is safe, but technically is not worth anything as all the work required to pass can be undone instantaneously.
just my 2 pence worth.
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Posted By Andrew Murdy
The Voluntary Protection Program exempts sites from the Planned Inspections carried out by OSHA. The last time I looked, planned inspections were running at the rate of once every 50 years or something. So not much benefit or chance of being inspected unless there is an incident or a complaint!
Typically, this is a thought that sounds great but how often do the HSE inspect as a matter of routine rather than as a result of a complaint or incident?
It strikes me that we will have another inspection, certification and assessment process, all apparently leading to an increase in efficiency, but that changes little except hit the bottom lines of one set of companies as a cost and one set as an income.
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Posted By Jay Joshi I wonder how much as been "lost in translation/communication" regarding what was actually said. In USA, OSHA Inspectors have the right to inspect and employers cannot refuse that. This is again a typical case of being ill-informed. In USA, OSHA has the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) This is one aspect of health and safety system, led by the regulator in USA that is better than ours. In practice, VPP sets performance-based criteria for a managed safety and health system, invites sites to apply, and then assesses applicants against these criteria. OSHA’s verification includes an application review and a rigorous on site evaluation by a team of OSHA safety and health experts. On achieving a particular level of VPP performance, the sites are exempt from routine inspections--the key word is routine inspections. The VPP system is ideal for static sites such as manufacturing and similar, but not where the hazards and risks are dynamic, such as construction sites! More details at:- http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/index.html
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Posted By Phil Rose
Did this thread disappear a little while ago?
I haven't heard of this one, and would assume that would require an amendment to the HSAWA. Interesting stuff. Personally I don't have a problem with the use of externally audited inspectors, but unsure of the advantage of preventing HSE inspectors access to sites. If this audited inspection has been carried out well, then any subsequent HSE visit would theoretically be a straightforward affair. I assume that they would still have access in the event of an accident, injury, fatality?
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Posted By grim72
Yes, I pasted the article on the original post (apparantly I'm not allowed to do this). So re-posted with a link to the article instead.
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Posted By Flic
grim - we all have to be careful with copyright issues. Generally, copying from one website to another, or from one document to another is not permitted.
Flic
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Posted By Yossarian
I must admit, I struggled to square the report with the usual Conservative image as the party of law and order.
Inspector - "Excuse me sir, we have reason to believe a criminal offence has been committed in this workplace and would like to investigate using our S.20 powers."
Businessman - "Well my External Audit beats your Warrant, so you can't come in. Bye now!"
...There must have been something lost in translation.
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Posted By Brett Day
I worked for a US owned company and quite frankly was appalled at the way they (didn't) manage safety under the "earned autonomy" system talking to the US engineers they run two sets of accident books - one for the OSHA and the EA scheme and the real one, every five years they had a big blitz to get straight for the next EA inspection then it all went to pot again.
I flagged up problems with the UK factory, later found by the HSE on a routine, random inspection who issued two Improvement Notices and a Prohibition Notice. When the parent company in the US was told about this so they could obtain funds to comply with the notices, I was asked what would it take to get the inspector to look the other way, apparently this was the usual way the US factory dealt with such problems.
I for one dread anything like the US system coming over here based on my previous experiences.
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Posted By Steve Greenwood
Looks like a bit of electioneering to bash the "H&S police" rather than a well thought out policy. Competent external auditors cost good money, so I wouldn't expect small projects to be able to fund it. It could well be attractive on larger jobs though. One of the dangers I can see is HSE investigators being independantly unable to follow up complaints from the public or from whistle blowers. Also, pre-arranged performance checks will not necessarily reveal shortcomings, as site managers and supervisors have the time to cover them up. In my experience, unannounced spot checks are always more potent.
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Posted By Nigel Bryson
Dear All
Election fever is in the air. The Tories appear to have raised this issue in response to various recent items about health and safety 'red tape' putting British business out of business. The most noticeable aspect of this proposal is any credible evidence to support what they propose.
I was under the impression the collapse of the financial sector was more of a concern but apparently not.
It follows on from the proposal to exempt the Police from the HSAW Act because they have too many incompetent managers.
The deregulation exercise of 1993/4 highlighted both the requirements of the HSAW Act 1974 and the European constitution: namely you cannot make a change that will reduce the current legal standards of health and safety. Hence they failed in their attempt to weaken the HSAW Act 1974 itself.
The political failure of the deregulation exercise led to a reduction of HSE resources and helped prompt the Tory Government to abolish the annual grant for trade union safety representative training by 1995.
On the other hand the deregulation exercise did get rid of about 40% of the H&S laws on the 'books' at that time. The repealed law was mainly no longer used, not doing any harm and had laid around on the stature books unloved for decades, in some cases.
HSE did not want to waste resources with a single 'big hit' tidying up exercise but repeal them in tandem with implementing new laws. Nevertheless, the Government did give the 'burden' to them.
The proposed legal change will be difficult unless they amend the first part of the HSAW Act 1974. Previous attempts failed.
As for prohibiting HSE Inspectors because a consultant or worthy organisation say you are OK opens up some quite mind blowing opportunities for conflict of interests, misleading advice, cowboy consultants, legal opportunities for our learned QCs and so on. There is enough of this already.
Given the next Government will have more pressing issues overall, I doubt if it will be high on their 'first year' priorities. It got the headlines, time to move on folks.
Cheers.
Nigel
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Posted By clairel
Haven't read all that Nigel said (sorry, long post) but I assume he is saying that it is all just election rubbish. They have been threatening (promising??) to de-regulate the H&S legislation for years. But they cannot do it. It's not just British Law but European law and they can't pick and choose on that.
(But personally I do think they HSE needs a massive overhaul - to get the many warranted inspectors back out in the field as opposed to their cushy office jobs in Sector or Policy - sorry HSE bods (ex-colleagues) but call it as I see it)
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Posted By Jay Joshi
We are all speculating as we do not have the first hand report of what was said and what was the context!
Unless any of the any political parties want to exit from the EU, I am afraid that the EU directive led legislation is there to stay.
The reality is that after the multitude of health and safety directive in late 1980's and early 1990's, there is not much "new" in the pipeline that will significantly affect the low risk businesses.
It would be better if the political parties analysed the root causes and addressed those rather than populist sound-bites.
Whatever system we use, inspection and enforcement requires resourcing, and that has to be paid for. What we need to do is to look at cost effective methods of achieving this.
The OSHA VPP is a good system (in any system, there will be some who misuse it!)but it is not free and to a large extent, the US taxpayer and the volunteers from participant companies ultimately pay for it. It is a fallacy to consider that OSHA will not inspect/investigate if they have good reason to do so, despite a site having VPP Star Status.
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Posted By John Richards "The powers of Government inspectors will be drastically curbed by allowing firms to arrange their own, externally audited inspections and, providing they pass, to refuse entry to official inspectors thereafter. We will also introduce ‘MOT style’ inspection reports, quoting precisely which section of which law has been broken, to prevent regulatory ‘scope creep’ where laws are applied too strictly by overzealous inspectors" http://www.conservatives...rRegulation.ashx?dl=trueI doubt whether copyright is an issue. It is a published conservative "green paper" In any case: nothing changes. As said to me yesterday: "in the current economic climate nobody cares a s**t about health and safety...if you won't do it **** *** and I'll get someone else who will"
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Posted By John Richards
And to be fair, and true.....that has been the attitude of small builders/business for as long as I can remember !
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Posted By BJA
Surely the new EU President in waiting Tony Blair wont allow that.
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Posted By db
I can't see how this would lead to a reduction in "bureacracy" for businesses.
Surely they'd have to be doing exactly the same kind of things in order to pass the "strict external inspections"?
So what will it save? An hour or two of a site visit.
Well done Mr Clarke.
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Posted By David Brede
When responding to accusations that she was allowing high levels of unemployment during the early years of her reign, Margaret Thatcher called it 'a price worth paying'. I guess a few extra deaths in industry could be put in the same way?
Did the Tories attending the IOSH fringe event at their conference express such views?
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Posted By John Fraser
Could this be the start of public sector cutbacks that the tories have promised if they win next year.
Do you think this is the start of a privatisation process for construction firms to self police themselves ( by either relying on in-house personnel or external consultants to monitor and advise ), rather than putting the onus onto public enforcement bodies like HSE / Environmental Health / EA / SEPA etc to respond. In my opinion this has been happening in the last decade, where construction firms have had to employ h & s people to help them adhere to legislation and good practice, as legislation is becoming more onerous.
I suppose you could argue that for the consultants and in-house health and safety personnel, this could be beneficial interms of constant employment, rather than trying to get involved in the public sector enforcement bodies whenever they recruit, where for most people it is very difficult to get in anyway.
John
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Posted By db
The point is they should already be using consultants and in-house health and safety personnel so there will be no change in employment for this kind of work. But you can see that (if the report is to be believed)if they pass one inspection and there is no fear of regulation, it would be easy for standards to slip. Purposely or otherwise.
HSE are not adding a burden by inspecting - they are only burdening companies who fail to manage their own H&S (the whole point of HSWA) by getting them to carry out remedial actions or by prosecuting them. It's called regulation and Mr Clarke seems not to have a scooby about it.
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Posted By John Richards And: back by no popular demand. The removed post, with parts removed. "The powers of Government inspectors will be drastically curbed by allowing firms to arrange their own, externally audited inspections and, providing they pass, to refuse entry to official inspectors thereafter. We will also introduce 'MOT style' inspection reports, quoting precisely which section of which law has been broken, to prevent regulatory 'scope creep' where laws are applied too strictly by overzealous inspectors" http://www.conservatives...rRegulation.ashx?dl=true I doubt whether copyright is an issue. It is a published conservative "green paper"
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Tories to bar HSE inspectors from building sites
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