I thought that the only way that we under implemented the directive was not extending duties to domestic clients (doing so will go down really well with Daily Mail readers). Considering both Lofsteft and the HSE's own review moreorless gave the current regulations a "thumbs up", you have to conclude that this is a government decision.

Ron The domestic client issue isn't a red herring. http://eur-lex.europa.eu...010:328:0008:0008:EN:PDF ...but the gold plating thing is. There have been at least three research reports concluding that there isn't really any evidence that UK is gold plating directives. ...but Vince Cable announced in 2011, that future approach would be to copy out directives to avoid POSSIBLE gold plating. Lofstedt said we should go back to EU to renegotiate unnecessarily prescriptive directives, but this wouldn't achieve the Coalition target of cutting 50% of regulations (which translates as statutory instruments) by the next election. Brief given to Lofstedt was to look at scope for reducing or consolidating the number of statutory instruments, but the words SIs have not been mentioned once since. So, if you consolidate 40 SIs covering mining, you reduce the number of "regulations" by 39. Of course this isn't actually true as all you do is create a wholly unwieldy bible constituting all the sector specific regulations covering mining - exactly what QC appointed to advise HSE as to scope for consolidation concluded as regards constuction H&S legislation in the Republic of Ireland. Meantime we continue to waste resources on finding Norwegian Blue Parrot regulations that noone remembers to revoke, including regulations that in themselves revoked legislation. Tidy up good, but cutting red tape only in spin. CDM - as you indicate Lofstedt and others consider generally working well. We would need to amend in the short term to extend to domestic clients (in the circumstances covered by Nussbaumer judgment), but could then go back and amend the directive to specifically exclude all domestic clients - UK clearly not alone in not thinking that the directive was intended to apply to Mrs Smith, aged 89.

The whole issue could get even more confusing with the TCMSD itself up for review at EU level next year. We could (stress could) have proposed new regulations that will not comply with any new directive, which in turn could lead to another review. (That is if we are still in the EU by then). Another fly in the ointment is that any delay in bringing the new regs into force will mean a likely implementation date of April 2015. This will be close to the next General Election and could mean the Regulations are not signed off by the minister before Parliament is dissolved.