Everyone needs to be accountable for expenses, we are in our work, got to laugh at MP's criticising though, when you think the tax payers money they spend on expenses

Firstly, I don't think the MP's should be criticising any organisation for squandering after the press they have had over the last few year’s in regards to the expenses scandal. Secondly, regarding the “Just Beautifully” claim, we cannot have our HSE regulators going out there looking scruffy :0) But I agree, it's not the best press to have against an organisation that carries a Warrant of the Law! P.S At least they won't be welcome in Marks & Spencers anymore! http://www.hse.gov.uk/pr...#?eban=rss-press-release

I bet the £22K was not for an "annual party", but for a "management strategy conference" or some such nonsense. But, even if it is for the "annual party" - what? Why do tax-payers have to pay them to have a party? As for the comparison with the DT's expenses, we can chooses whether or not to buy that paper - not much realistic choice over paying for the HSE. The DT has been publishing a few of these stories recently (it was local authority people a couple of week's ago), and, of course, it was the DT that published the MPs' expenses. It all just seems to show that public sector individuals and organisations have lost the concept they once had of safeguarding public money. Cue some comment lefty comment about bankers, I expect ...

All that money spent, and look what you get for it! Hardly value for money is it?

Very good reply from the HSE http://www.hse.gov.uk/pr...legraph031011details.htm

They still haven't justified the use of 4 and 5 star hotels. Which they haven't denied using. Do you really want the HSE inspectors staying in 4 and 5 star hotels but not able to a make front line inspections? Like I said, I found it all very nice at the time but the reality is it's not justified at the public expense.

To suggest that if the HSE did not use 4 or 5 star hotels then the HSE would be able to continue with inspection levels is unsound. The total expenditure on hotels over 2 years is only about half a million. Their operating costs in 2010/2011 reduced by 29 million year on year! How much less would have been spent on hotels if lesser venues had been available and used? 100K? 200K? Who has those estimates/figures to hand when condemning the HSE for the use of 4 and 5 star venues? The HSE response clearly shows that the expenditure is typically businesslike. One would find similar expenditures in any well managed and profitable business. What happened in the past with regard to so called “jollies” is no indication of what might be the case today. However, such approaches to staff welfare, development and communication are well recognised and when planned and managed well they are very effective. Therefore to simply condemn their use because it is taxpayers money is confusing. Where the HSE needs to engage with business it has to do so in an appropriate manner and location. Whether one likes it or not that sometimes means at prestigious locations and top class venues. To suggest that the HSE would be naive enough to ignore or fail to understand the need for prudence and financial governance at any time is laughable; in the present climate, it beggars belief. I am not saying that the HSE should be beyond challenge but neither should the press be. I think the HSE has responded very professionally to the valid challenge made by the DT. It's a shame that the DT will never recognise and publicise that response. p48

Oh right so you're saying that because half a million isn't enough to keep the info line going that they don't need to bother trying to reduce that amount!! Right. You don't believe in saving the pennies then!! Once more you are confusing the idea of 4-5 star venues with what is actually reported as 4-5 star HOTELS, not venues, used for putting HSE staff up for the night. That is very different. You can't compare the amounts to profitable businesses becuase the HSE is not a profitable business it is a publicly funded body. Very few companies will treat their staff as well as the HSE in terms of things like hotels, training etc. I am lucky to be once again working for a company that does spend money treating its staff well but for years I have had to put up with cheaper hotels and other restrictions on spending. That is more the norm, especially in tough financial times. The HSE staff are no more happy and productive for all this money spent on them, indeed their long term absence rate for stress is very high - so not exactly working is it!!! It is tax payers money (including my taxes) and so the HSE - along with all publicly funded bodies, should be held up to rigorous scrutiny for every penny they spend. I think this ort of thing should happen more often becuase it seems to take naming and shaming to make gov't depts and officials take how they are spending public money seriously.

Having only left HSE within the last 12 months, I thought I’d throw my tuppence in an attempt to shed a little light on the issue with hotels. Historically, HSE did used to use a lot of hotels for residential training course, often starting on a Monday lunchtime and finishing Friday lunchtime. And, yes, they were regularly 4-star hotels – I recall going to the Village in Leeds, the Dunkenhalgh in Clayton-le-Moors, and the Wrightington in Wigan. More often than not, these were chosen because they had conferencing facilities co-located rather than because they were nice hotels to go and have a jolly at. Also, the venues were often booked at rates negotiated via centralised government contracts and were at much reduced rates which meant that these venues were more cost effective than booking a cheaper hotel, then a separate training venue and the cost of transport between the two. Over the past few years, however, much of HSE’s training has been delivered at Redgrave Court with delegates booking accommodation in the local area via HSE’s hotel booking agency (whose name escapes me). A regularly used hotel is the Holiday Inn in Liverpool city centre. From memory, the government rate was around £50-55/night B&B which is hardly excessive. Yes, these may be 4-star hotels, but these are often large chains who are able to sacrifice profit margin for volume making them cheaper than lower-grade hotels. With regards to overnight accommodation whilst carrying out front line work, in my experience this happens very infrequently. The two main examples I can think of where this happens are firstly for Inspectors covering large, remote and rural areas where they will go and spend a couple of days in an area and are able to visit a larger number of premises than if they were travelling there and back on a daily basis (and the accommodation costs would also be offset against the reduced travelling costs). The second example is for larger investigations where, in particular, specialist Inspectors are brought in to spend a longer period on the site of an incident (eg Buncefield). Certainly, overnight accommodation as a regular thing for front-line work is uncommon – I can think of two occasions I did this in 13+ years. One other thing which is often overlooked in these debates is the cost of “time”. For example, one of the questions raised by the DT relates to air travel, with an implicit allegation that it is expensive and likely to be unjustified. I live approx 5 mins from Gatwick airport so when travelling to meetings or courses at Redgrave Court I would often fly to Manchester and take a hire car from Manchester to Bootle. Quite often this worked out cheaper than the equivalent rail journey but, even where the headline cost was slightly more, it was usually a couple of hours shorter than a Gatwick-Victoria-Euston-Liverpool-Bootle train journey, so the overall cost was still less.

I tend to be with pete48 on this and suspect that some forum users enjoy frothing with indignation at the alleged excesses of HSE portrayed by the Daily Telegraph (DT) article. If so, they won’t be happy at the information in the subsequent HSE press release which seemed to put the DT allegations into proper perspective. I was going to add some comments about my experience of HSE’s residential training courses and conferences, but thankfully mylesfrancis has already provided a good summary based on his much more recent experience. Organisations such as HSE (and IOSH come to think of it!) almost certainly negotiate the best discounts they can for block or repeat bookings with accommodation providers. My first posting with HSE in the late 1970s was at its Aberdeen office for 4 years from where a small team of inspectors dealt with the vast majority of non-LA enforced businesses and organisations throughout Northern Scotland. Thus, unlike most inspectors in other parts of the UK, our inspection visits inevitably involved overnight stays on a fairly regular basis. Like employees of most other publicly funded organisations, we could claim one of 3 levels of subsistence (i.e. expenses for meals and, where appropriate, overnight accommodation) for trips beyond reasonable access to home/office. The levels were time related, namely over 5 hours, over 10 hours and over 24 hours. Therefore, our choices of overnight accommodation for one or more successive 24 hour periods away were constrained by the prevailing level of subsistence for 24 hours which had to cover meals as well as accommodation. I don’t recall anyone paying extra from their own money to stay anywhere posh. The subsistence rate for stays in London was higher than for elsewhere in the UK, no doubt in an attempt to reflect the markedly higher costs in London. Even so, from recollection of staying in a mediocre guest house while attending a week’s training course in 1985, the London rate didn’t seem sufficient to match the actual costs involved. If HSE had block-booked accommodation for attendees from outside London it may well have been able to obtain better accommodation and for less cost. As an aside, the Aberdeen HSE team sometimes found that others didn’t always understand the considerable driving distances and times involved in covering our inspection patch. Furthermore, the roads we used were invariably busy A roads with only a few limited stretches of dual carriageway, notably vulnerable at times to ice & snow in winter plus tourists driving slowly in summer while gawping at scenery. One person rang asking me to just nip over to Inverness to deal with some matter, evidently assuming that Inverness was virtually a suburb of Aberdeen rather than 2.5 hours drive away. Thus, when I transferred to HSE’s Dundee office, I was relieved that its patch was notably smaller geographically than Aberdeen’s smaller and didn’t entail long distances or overnight stays. Also, for some perspective about the Highland roads, despite good standards of salting and gritting, one of HSE’s agricultural inspectors based in Aberdeen was killed while driving on business when a lorry jackknifed into his car on an exposed and icy stretch of the A96 in the 1980s.

Well if you're referring to me then I was talking directly from my experiences of working for the HSE, at a time when (late 90's and early noughties) I observed them spending money excessively and unecessarily IMO on training up inspectors and also of wasted money spent internally on personnel campaigns and other nonsense. Not bigoted not irrational, and not jumping on the band wagon. My expereince at that time. That's all. As to believing what is written in the press, well that just demonstrates how little you know about me.

None of this should really come as any real surprise since the HSE decided to value each inspector at around 200-250k per year for the purposes of cost recovery ;)

Of course HSE waste money. Every organisation does. Whilst it is always desirable to avoid this it will never happen. Therefore, it is important to put it into perspective. I've never observed HSE inspectors being extravagant, and I think their reply to DT gives an excellent account of their spending. Although it sounds daft, there is often a cost to saving money. An everyday example would be using petrol driving around town to avoid paying for parking. Often the cost is intangible. For hotels, how long do you spend trying to find a cheaper one, is the cheaper one likely to mess you around and how will a poor night affect the inspector's performance? According to laterooms, I can stay in a 4 star hotel in Hull this evening for £69, including breakfast. I would not mind if an HSE inspector chose that 4 star option.