Posted By Bill Bircham In the recently published Rail Review White Paper, the Government announced that they are going to take the HMRI (the Railway Inspector) element out of the HSE and place them within the Office of the Rail Regulator. An extract from the White Paper states:- “Moving health and safety regulation, and experience and expertise, from HSE to ORR will simplify the regulatory structure of the rail industry and provide a fresh start to encourage cultural change across the rail industry. It will enable the development of an independent regulator with specialist economic and safety rail expertise and allow decisions which touch on both economic and safety regulation to be brought together. An interface will need to be identified between ORR and HSE, as exists between the CAA and the HSE, and will need to be set out in a memorandum of understanding between the two bodies. A clear definition will need to be established of the operational railway to be subject to health and safety regulation by ORR rather than HSE.” An extract from the published IOSH response states:- "IOSH, together with the British Safety Council and RoSPA, submitted a joint letter in May 2004 voicing concern to Mr Darling over the possible removal of railway regulation from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and are disappointed that this appears not to have been addressed. It centred on whether a conflict of interest could result, or be perceived to result, from placing railway health and safety enforcement with a body responsible for economic regulation and wider oversight of the railway network. We are also concerned that the government’s proposed changes may divert attention away from health and safety, as managers and industry leadership will, once again, have their eyes taken off the ball.” My question to all, especially those within the Rail industry, who do you think is right and why?

Posted By Alan Osborne I support the DfT review findings as the HSE have had railways for 14 years now and it has just not got to grip with regulating safety in this industry. Reliabilty has plummeted and cost have gone up 4-fold. HSE have traeted railways like a major hazard industry and this has caused confusion and unneccessary bureaucracy. If this is not addressed (and it may already be too late for some services), some railways will close and more people will forced onto a higher risk form of transport called roads (which HSE also do not regulate and have even been reluctant to do so from an occupational point of view). Given HSE do not regulate passenger safety on other transport modes it is illogical for them to regulate railways. I envisage the new ORR being a similar organisation to the CAA in aviation, regulating safety and economic performance. As passengers most of us seem happy enough to fly with the HSE not involved and therefore I fail to see why the RSG are unhappy about them not being involved in passenger safety on our railways. As helath and safety professionals we must move with the times and I would have preferred the RSG's approach being to offer help to the SoS for transport rather than chastise him.

Posted By Robert K Lewis I seem to remember the almost exact same arguments being used to place the rail safety regulation with the HSE. It just goes to show that we need to go backwards to go forwards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Or something like that. We will I dae say in 20 years time use the arguement once more to take safety away from the ORR or its descendant. I think that this is yet another change for the sake of appearing to be tackling a problem rather than addressing the fundamental issues of culture with the railway management structures. Bob