Couldn't understand how the ORR decided to continue with a trial against the driver when it seemed obvious from the findings of an Inquest in 2021, that the crash in 2016 in which seven died and other passengers were injured was clearly linked to issues of poorly designed infrastructure and a culture of staff feeling discouraged from raising concerns.

Now it seems that it took the Jury less than two hours to decide that the driver was not guilty of what I assume was a charge under Section 7 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Given what is known about the frequency of car drivers having "microsleeps", it seemed to me entirely unreasonable to decide that a tram driver apparently having such a moment of distraction merited personal prosecution.

Driver of Croydon tram in fatal 2016 crash cleared by Old Bailey jury | Rail transport | The Guardian

The key duty holders here - Transport for London and Tram Operations Ltd (a subsidiary of First Group) pleaded guilty to the charges laid against them in June 2022 and will now be sentenced in due course.

Sometimes the Regulator gets it wrong. Sometimes the defendant seeks and gets justice.

Chris - indeed, terrible delay for both victims and their nearest and dearest and for one of the defendants and his nearest and dearest.

Health and safety prosecutions have been taking longer and longer to get to Court. 

AK - I think the overall approach is broadly similar in HSE as it is in ORR not least given the number of staff that ORR inherited from HSE when there was a recognition that it would be helpful to abandon the prescription that HM Inspectors of Railways should necessarily come from a background in the rail sector - and hence bring in some fresh thinking.

But also if you compare the training of new Inspectors:

So HSE:

A requirement for all new General and Regulatory Specialist Inspectors is to obtain a Post-Graduate Diploma in Regulatory Occupational Health and Safety which is bespoke to HSE (accredited by NEBOSH). This will give you the technical and legal skills you need to do your job as an effective regulator, under-pinned by an academic qualification. This is a valuable opportunity to obtain a qualification from one of the UK’s best regarded vocational awarding bodies, funded by your employer. All newly appointed Regulatory Trainee Inspectors will undertake the Diploma which can take up to 3 years to complete. Following completion of the Diploma, a year of mandatory Continuing Professionally Development (CPD) will be required. [My italics]

....and ORR:

ORR delivers a three-year structured training programme to enable trainee inspectors to demonstrate initial competence. Training is coordinated by ORR’s Learning and Development team. On successful completion of the training programme, you will be awarded a Diploma in Regulatory Railway Health and Safety, accredited by NEBOSH, which is an externally recognised qualification. [My italics]

So the days of being sent away to Imperial College or Aston Uni for 6 months to get a Post Grad Diploma as part of a two year HSE training programme have gone to be replaced by a NEBOSH Diploma in "Regulatory Health and Safety" [+ in each case a single word to distinguish an HSE Inspector Diploma from an ORR one]. In practice the overall training period was of similar duration - 2 years, then another as a qualified Inspector before promotion to the next grade.

It is difficult to see how the content of these "different" NEBOSH Diplomas might not be largely identical since what the Inspectors do in two Regulators is broadly the same.

Enforcement of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act and whatever subordinate legislation applies to the sector or sectors the Inspector is working in.

So the HSE Inspector does not need to learn about rail specific legislation, but needs to learn about comparable requirements in e.g. COMAH - though perhaps not as immediately..

Similarly the ORR Inspector wouldn't need quite as much understanding of CDM as the inspection of most major construction projects on the rail network falls to HSE.

But beyond those differences, each Inspector has essentially exactly the same legislation to enforce and, thence, needs broadly the same skill sets except that the ORR Inspector is less likely to face abuse when visiting e.g. scrap merchants and back street garages - but then I don't remember the syllabus when I went to Aston covering that particular challenge!!

Brian, possibly you dodged a bullet by getting rejected in your job application, but the tale does show that HSE are not immune from the problem that one part of an organisation might not be up to speed with what another part is doing.

As for the Fatty Arbuckle prosecution it seemed to me at the time that an individual prosecution was entirely justified with the problem being that much of the media including in particular the H&S media kept describing the defendant as the company's "health and safety manager" when the evidence was that he was a senior boss - an "executive".

Boss fined over worker death | York Press

As a result the overall impact of the prosecution was to be likely to reinforce the not uncommon position where line managers think that they can leave the H&S stuff to the Safety Bod rather than treat H&S as an integral part of their function.

....and, of course, some used the case to try and sell courses to H&S professionals to try and frighten them with threats that they were at risk of ending up in the dock. True but not much truer than for just about anybody else.

The coverage COULD have been such as to send a completely different message. "You are a Director/Manager/Supervisor - you must OWN health and safety as part of your role."

Firesafety - NVQ Level 3 might be of help with an application but would not be a substitute for the training that both HSE and ORR require of new Inspectors - the Diploma will be at either Level 6 (probably) or Level 7.

As the person specs for both Regulators are worded there is no wriggle room. An applicant could be a Chartered Member of IOSH (which broadly implies already having an occupational health and safety qualification at Level 6 + years of experience as an OSH professional) and the Regulator would STILL require them to do this "Regulatory" Diploma - partly as each Regulator wants a "cohort" of new Inspectors to all do the same formal training as a group.

This does mean that the experienced OSH professional might be the one who might disrupt the group dynamics as much of the training would be at a lower level to that they have been used to working.

However, in practice, this is unlikely to happen as the packages on offer to Trainee Inspectors are unlikely to be appealing to someone already in a role requiring such a level of experience - might get the odd person who has already got a Level 6 qualification, but less experience but that might be a risk that each Regulator has planned for.

From what I can see the only way of sidestepping very prescriptive rules would be for the Regulator to find an alternative recruitment route - perhaps second in somebody with the skills and experience, give them targetd training on how to be an Inspector and then confirm their permanent employment.

Morning Brian

From my recollection the only times I was ever in the proper media as an Inspector was two appearances on the TV news but not with a speaking part (!). 

Once the cameras caught me whilst I was looking at a fairground ride, the other when two of us were pacing the area North of the Finniestoun Crane after one of the fireworks in an organised display had not exploded as designed with shrapnel flying all over the place. 

Misquoted later in my career. Page 3 in the Daily Record (Scotland's leading redtop). Even got my name wrong (!) - Gotca.

But, to be fair to the correspondent, three months later, the Sheriff misquoted me (though on different evidence that I had given in the witness box) in his decision on the case. Either that or he couldn't read his own handwriting, when setting out his written judgment..