When you get these written details , please share them with the forum. "Where a dutyholder is in contravention of the law for which costs can be recovered, FFI is only payable once written notification of the inspector’s opinion is provided to the dutyholder, ie it is confirmed as a material breach. The written notification must include the following information: a. The law that the Inspector’s opinion relates to; b. The reasons for their opinion; and c. Notification that a fee is payable to HSE."

After over 9 months when no HSE visits occurred at any of my 90+ SME clients, two of my clients got an unannounced visit within a day or so, this in the week after the government announced a review of the HSE - Purely coincidence of course..... One has posted an FFI notice (hand-written - I'll be interested to see how long it took him to write it) relating to several matters which were probably not a "material breach" as such although not shining examples of good practice (tatty but technically safe stepladder etc, couldn't show the inspector the RCD trip on the external pressure washer, although with a 1 year-old building there would have been one on the main dist. board, if they'd looked closely, tatty low-level racking sections which were about to be dismantled.) I'm waiting to see about the other one - no letter yet. Oddly enough, at a 3rd client where the operator stuck his finger into a router doing something silly (ouch!), there's been no visit at all after reporting the incident. There seems to be no consistency at all, but then I guess that's typical. I think it'll be a very good idea to demand a breakdown of any bill received. You'd do that for any other civil bill or invoice for work done. The HSE are required to recover their costs. Recovering more, like Shakespeare's Shylock, would be illegal. How much time does it take to fill in 3 paragraphs on a hand-written FFI form? I'll soon find out.....

michael m r Is the traffic system on the site involved seriously conjested and/or have there been any vehicle collisions or near-collisions? If not, and the traffic system works reasonably safely despite being busy (presumably through the application of the risk assessments and systems of work you mention, I'm baffled as to what material breach is involved. Did the inspector serve a prohibition notice regarding the traffic system or indicate that he/she would be serving an improvement notice or sending a letter to indicate what significant improvement/s are needed? DaveDaniel - Though you refer to an FFI notice and an FFI form, I guess you actually mean Improvement Notices and Prohibition Notices. Surely FFI is simply the system by which HSE recoups the costs involved when its inspectors take action regarding what they consider to be material breaches.

michael Your recollection of the sliding scale shown to you by the inspector is very pertinent. If HSE is telling its inspectors to look for 'minor material' breaches which trigger FFI, this suggests a focus on income generation and one which is based on a flawed interpretation of material breach (i.e. significant ones, not minor ones which any inspector can readily find during visits to most workplaces and sites. As for purple status, the serving of a prohibition notice (PN) shouldn't necessarily involve a court. If the recipient complies with the notice, that ought to conclude the matter - just as the Robens Committee intended when laying the foundations for the HSW Act 1974, or has there been a major change in HSE policy about PNs? Can anyone get hold of a copy of the sliding scale and share its contents on this forum?

HSE are bound to follow the principles of their Enforcement Management Model when applying FFI. http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/emm.pdf I'm not aware that this 'colour-coded guide' is available in the public domain. If it isn't, then that seems remiss of the HSE.

Hear what you are saying Shinon55, however the scale was not a printing issue, the four colours were on one A4 landscape page!! G,Y, R & P. I couldn't read all the criteria underneath each colour as he did not leave it lying about once he showed me it a couple of times, but what I did see was based around opinion rather than clear guidance for him, therefore, any FFI, in my opinion, will be a matter of interpretation by each HMI. I will wait for his letter and go from there. I will certainly share with the forum what happens. Have a good weekend and stay safe

Interesting stuff. Graham Bullough: The site is a brand new transport depot with repair workshop with government MOT testing bay. The busy workshop was untidy with some scattered tools and other items, but by no means poor. External transport was well controlled. Some old 15ft high racking had been rescued from a previous site and was being used in a small store for archive and redundant storage including someones old gas cooker. some safety clips missing and not bolted to the floor. Some old flight steps in workshop battered but serviceable plus some old damaged ladders that had been left by 3rd party lorries being repaired/MOT'd and not used. The inspector didn't accept that these were not in use apparently. I know an improvement notice when I see one. What was sent was a scrappy, hand-written pro-forma letter setting out grounds for an FFI charge. Regarding lodging a claim, you are quite right - some of the matters raised were questionable, and all were pretty minor but it seems to me that you have to be able to challenge ALL matters raised, otherwise the HSE will just say they still need to make the charge because of what's outstanding. I guess the more niggles they raise, the less potential there is for any appeal. I'd like to think that my clients would appeal, but in reality they've got a business to run and to be blunt it's probably going to be cheaper to pay up and shut up than spend the time quibbling, then they can get on with the real safety issues that I've been working with them on, and which weren't even picked up by the HSE inspector...

I'm sorry Dave Daniel but the circumstances described above in your clients premises would call for an informal letter or improvement notice any day of the week. Unsafe racking in use, numerous trip hazards and defective access equipment are not trivial issues that can be ignored. You give a list of excuses that any inspector will hear on a daily basis such as, we have just had a huge delivery and the storeman is off sick to justify poor conditions in a warehouse. If the damaged ladders were not in use why were they not in the skip. If the racking is not stabilised or in serviceable condition it should not have been loaded. It certainly sounds as if your client does not have his problems to seek as far as H&S is concerned.

This is my worry - they loose sight of their real job

In the absence of an edit function, I'll try again: Maybe Dave used his skills to decide they are (relatively) trivial and was concentrating on the serious stuff.

Dazzling Puddock Actually I'd visited the site about a week beforehand and commented on the old ladders and flight steps out in the yard, and the racking, as well as tidying the workshop stores and repair bays, along with a few other minor matters. If that's all you come up with for your FFI after having spent 2 hours crawling over the whole site, I don't think that's bad. If I wished to, I'm sure I could go into any site in the country and find something to pin an FFI on, based on the current criteria.