It occurs to me that the original HSWA 1974 came about to address the vast numbers of different bits of law that we were meant to keep track of and follow, it was to bring them into one place to condense and to make them understandable. Since this Act, we have grown a plethora of regulations to cover this area or that, many as a result of the EU some as a result of incidents and discoveries. So we have the hour glass effect, lots of legislation being condensed to the HSWA 1974 (plus a few others) then mushrooming to the vest numbers of regulations we now have. My question is simple; do we need all these regulations? Let’s take risk assessment, which is prescribed in many regulations. Why does it need to be prescribed more than once? Surely we just need to say the risk assessment should be proportional to the activities that are being undertaken. This would then apply to work stations, construction sites, manufacturing operations etc. Any thoughts?

We need to understand the concept of what it takes to transpose EC/EU directives into GB health & safety law. It cannot be done by HASAWA alone and also, not through a single risk assessment requirement in law. Also, please dont bash the EU membership etc, because the Lofstedt review highlighted that GB would have had 90% of the "new legislation" even if GB was not an EU member. For example, The Republic of Ireland's "Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007" has our equivalent of Welfare, PUWER, PPE, Electricity at Work, Working at Height, Noise, Vibration at Work, Young persons, Nursing & expectant mothers, Night/shift working (the safety aspects of working time regs!), First Aid & DSEAR in a single set of regulation, but with different chapters and all the relevant schedules. The outcomes expected will be the SAME, no reduction in burden, except one will claim to have "reduced" 13 regulations into one.

This from the Government's commissioned Lofsted Report: 'the amount of regulation has reduced over the past few decades...there is 46 per cent less health and safety regulation than 35 years ago and 37 per cent less than just 15 years ago.'

Who's we? I think I could manage most things just from the management regs, be that work at heights, confined spaces etc. But then I hope I understand Risk Assessment quite well having worked in Health and Safety for over 20 years. However take a look at the in court section of SHP and see how many of those people could manage. Even with detailed requirements such as those within the Work at Height Regulations they still get it wrong. I know its totally against the principles of HASWA but some people need it spelling out in black and white what is acceptable and what is not. If we went to one set of regulations with all the ACOPS combined how easy would it be for people to find what they needed. The HSE web site is fantastic but I sometimes feel I need a life jacket before I use it. For me the increase in regulations post 1974 has been to try and simplify for people what should be included in their considerations. Has it succeeded? Sadly not.

I don’t know if we need ‘all these regulations’ but when Professor Lofstedt reviewed them, he could only identify 5 that he could recommend revoking and 5 that should be ‘amended, clarified or reviewed’. Of course – as he identified – you could just take all the respective regulations on coal mining, for example, and put them in one document – thus wasting more HSE staff time in bureaucratic navel contemplation during their 35% staff cuts over 4 years. However I doubt if – had this been done sooner – it would have helped prevent the increase in deaths that have occurred in that sector recently. The regulations could be improved but each one goes through a process - in most cases – that lasts years. Thanks to the previous Tory Governments, each regulation has to have a cost/benefit analysis before it is introduced. I think the modern term is Regulatory Impact Assessment. While the British Chamber of Commerce only identifies costs in its H&S Business Barometer – they cannot seem to fit the benefits costing bit on the chart – the HSE does identify the beneficial aspects of new regulations. In the Prime Minister's flagship ‘hear the voice of the people’ Red Tape Challenge [or more accurately ‘the voice of the business people’] hardly anybody commenting has identified a specific regulation and argued why it is a problem; how it should be revoked, amended etc; or what cost is associated with it. Just amending the CDM Regs to get the 2007 version took over 4 years; Professor Lofstedt has recommended they be reviewed again!! The Prime Minister has castigated health and safety since his speech in December 2009 when he said: ‘I’m sure the rise of this over-the-top health and safety culture is one of the reasons why people feel so angry and frustrated with politics in our country today.’ He has subsequently followed this ‘opinion’ up with blaming H&S as an underlying cause of the riots in August 2011. He started this year off in highlighting his delight for attacking H&S by stating: “So this coalition has a clear New Year’s resolution: to kill off the health and safety culture for good.” In the same speech he pledged to tackle the "health and safety monster". So I think the regulations could be improved. The trouble is that this Government has set a political agenda that taints any meaningful review being undertaken. Rather than waste any more time on the regulations it would be more productive to identify how the regulations can be complied with in practice. On that issue the evidence is clear: increasing enforcement. However this is a solution the Government do not find politically acceptable. Cheers. Nigel

I agree with Nigel, that the Government clearly are not interested or motivated to have a sensible debate about this. If hypothetically we were starting from scratch, I would like a new H&S at Work Act that required all the elements of management systems to be in place - based on BSOHSAS18001 and HSG65. I would then like to see Regulations similar to what we have now but were all laid out with the same management system headings for consistency. But that's not going to happen with this incompetent lot in place. I can't see how combining Regulations generally is of benefit. For example, it might be tidy to put COSHH with CAW, CLW, etc but would merely create a bulkier set of regulations with more sections that are irrelevant to different employers.

Williams28557 In theory yes but in practice it is a bit more difficult. Let’s take COSHH. The core requirement is that you carry out a risks assessment and apply appropriate controls. You could say that for most employers that is that that is required but for a significant number of employers who work with more serious substances require a more direction as to what they need to do, for example labs working with biological agents or people working with carcinogens. So the regs need to be applicable to them as well. Unfortunately there is no easy way to distinguish between those employers who are relatively low risk and those that require more controls, so the regs have to cover everybody. If the COSHH regs where combined with other regs then, we’d end up with a massive document and a huge ACoP and people would complain about that. Being real, H&S is a burden on business but not as much of a burden as paying the wages, making sure that the PAYE is done, National Issuance paid, maternity and sick leave etc. This knocking of H&S is I think dangerous. It implies that we only need to get rid of controls on business and then all will be well in the world, the recession will disappear and the sun will shine. It’s the sort of policy that is created in ivory towers and think tanks and has no relation to the real world.

I honestly don't see the value in your proposal Williams 28557. Taking the "risk assessment bit" out of the myriad sets of othe Regulations would essentially require them all to be redrafted (as they would all then lose their general and legal context). A significant burden of work - to what end? Let's give the HSE some acknowledgement here. Despite what some would have us believe, there have been significant and frequent reviews of legislation etc. since 1974, and a managed program since at least 2006. A steady reduction in regulatory burden has and continues to be achieved, conducted in a balanced and added-value fashion. See: http://www.hse.gov.uk/simplification/index.htm Some politicians would have us believe that this is some "new" initiative and that the idea is entirely theirs (e.g. red tape challenge). I do fear that some practitioners are rising to the bait here.

Good point, re Regulation 5 of the Management Regulations. It would be more powerful though if it was enshrined within the H&S at Work Act - but as I say that's just a hypothetical ideal to me. Only because it might make prosecuting employers who do not apply a systematic approach to managing H&S easier to enforce and prosecute.

Jay We don't need to transcribe most parts of EC Directives via either ACOPs or regulations as the European Court of Justice has upheld the principle of "reasonable practicability". http://www.bailii.org/eu...s/EUECJ/2007/C12705.html The problem is that starting with deregulatory Thatcher regimes the UK response has in each case been to add yet another code of regulations, most of the content of which is redundant if we were to apply Sections 2-9 of the 1974 Act, whatever the sector or hazard.