By and large H&S legislation is quite good.

All we need is triple the number of feild HSE inspectors out there, creating a level playing field for the vast majority of law abiding organisations.

I see IOSH are in the Chair, so hopefully proper common sense will prevail. The IOSH response to LY's report brought back a reasoned and sensible sense of proportion to the debate. All is not lost perhaps.
http://www.iosh.co.uk/ne...ns/the_young_report.aspx

Of greater concern I think is the HSE's resignation to the will of their political lords and masters, with all parties in Government seemingly hell bent on implementing every single recommendation, irrespective of whether they're sensible or not.

I suggest that HSE Policy Unit (and Judith Hackett in particular) are in a very difficult position here.

Personally I believe that a major review of Health & Safety was long over due, and that a great opportunity to progress the cause of practical application has been lost through the political ramblings of LY. Having said that I find many of the responses from my fellow practitioners equally baffling. Most notably the view that there is a great army of 'cowboy' H&S Officers out there who are responsible for all the crazy advice that leads to the "elf & safety" stories in the media. Considering that we all accept that the vast majority of these stories have nothing what so ever to do with H&S, how can poor application of H&S be the cause???? An who are these unqualified, inexperienced charlatans who are bringing our profession into disrepute? Does any one out there have any data to support the accusation that there are large numbers of these 'incompetent' consultants out there leading the poor Employers astray?
My own experience, both as an Employee and as a Safety Professional, that it is often academically highly qualified practitioners who have been responsible for some of the more extreme examples of implementation. As an example I once saw a RA completed by a Fellow of IOSH for a domestic refuse collection team in which the firs 6 pages were for the daily vehicle checks. That's right, 6 pages and the vehicle had not even gotten out of the depot!! Also how many threads on this forum are around "if there is an incident who's fault is it?" what happened to H&S being about avoiding accidents, not about avoiding blame? I suppose what I am trying to say is that before we criticise others perhaps we should take a long hard look at ourselves.

As CLP & REACH are EU Regulations and not directives, member states do not have options of being able to integrate them.

Perhaps it is too simplistic to combine all chemicals legislation the outcomes expected are different.

COSHH is the GB regulation that implements several EU directives, and is primarily for worker protection

REACH already replaces about 40 pieces of "legislation" i.e directives with a streamlined and supposedly improved Regulation.

GHS is not a regulation at all or it is not even an international treaty, but an International Chemicals System agreed by experts under the auspicies of a United Nations body (UNCE) from many jurisdictions.

GHS has been implemented throughout EU as CLP Regulation and runs into approximately 1355 pages (this is becauise what was previously the Approved Supply list is now a part of the regulation and all the Hazard Statements & Precautionary Statements are in all offcial EU languages.

quote=JohnMurray]Don't forget, Health and Safety regulation has cost BritBiz some 21.3 billion pounds since 1998 !
I favour the total disbanding of HSE and removal of all regulation.
Congrats to the management team at a large retail distrib warehouse who just lost their annual bonus for having a low accident rate........................................something to do with fiddling the accident book........must be nice for them to have such disloyal staff that inform on them....

John,

There is also another side of the coin, what is saved and what it still costs NOT to have adequate health and safety management/controls etc.

Stats can be used for any purpose. Yes, that couyld have been A cost, but how was that in comparision to lives saved and injuries/ill-health prevented !

Please do not laugh.
Or attempt to discharge a loaded firearm at a messenger.
The "cuts" will be based upon information the government has on the costs to industry of the regulations.
Available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?vx7y0h7k1kgjclo
A .pdf file of 113kb.
Note the cost to industry of the Working Time Directive (17.8 billion pounds) since 1998.
A breakdown of those costs would be interesting, but I have been unable to obtain such.
So, given that the information is from BritBiz ( a notoriously inefficient collection of organisations, except at tax-avoidance/evasion) you may like to peruse the contents of the above file.