Health and safety inspections are to be cut by a third in the deregulatory drive being pushed through Whitehall ahead of the "go for growth" budget due to be introduced in April.
The work and pensions minister Chris Grayling is to announce that future automatic practice inspections should only focus on high risk sites, such as energy, nuclear sites and chemical industries.
Grayling's proposal to end automatic inspections in medium and low risk industries should see a reduction of about 11,000 inspections a year.
Ministers will also introduce a charge on employers who endanger public and employee safety by making them, in the event of a complaint, pay the costs of investigations that show them to be in breach of the law. A guilty firm would also expect to pay a fine.
The charges are in part designed to fill a funding gap caused by a 35% cut in the budget of the Health and Safety executive by 2014-5. The cut was announced in the spending review last year. Critics of the reform fear it will act as a perverse incentive for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to find employers guilty of misconduct.
The government is already reducing the number of injuries that need to be reported, so that an episode involving someone being absent from work for up to a week need not be reported.
The deregulatory measures come alongside budget measures designed to relax employment laws for small businesses and change planning laws to make it easier to convert empty properties. One of the themes of the budget is to help people find jobs.
Grayling will also announce a long term review of all health and safety laws in the workplace to be undertaken by Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt, of Kings College London, a specialist in risk management. He will publish his findings in the autumn, and will build on work undertaken by Lord Young, David Cameron's former health and safety adviser .
The review will also look at so called goldplating of EU laws, something that is known to infuriate not just Cameron, but also ministers.
Grayling will say: "Of course it is right to protect employees in the workplace, but Britain's health and safety culture is also stifling business and holding back economic growth. The purpose of health and safety regulation is to protect people at work and rightly so. But we need common sense at the heart of the system,and these measures will help root out the needless burden of bureaucracy".
The proposals will be rejected by the construction union Ucatt. It is already angry at proposals that staff at companies employing fewer than 250 should no longer have the right to request training. This could include safety training in specialist areas such as asbestos awareness.
Judith Hackitt, chair of HSE, defended the plans: "HSE remains focused on preventing death, serious injury and ill health to those at work and those affected by work activities. With even better targeting of our activities we will further help small businesses to understand what they need to do. This will enable us to give the highest level of attention to those areas with the potential to cause most harm and where we can have the greatest impact."
The British Chamber of Commerce director general, David Frost, also backed the changes: "A thorough review of health and safety rules can only be good news, provided it is followed by real action to reduce burdens on businesses.
"Simplifying and codifying health and safety laws will help employers spend less time on tick box exercises, and more time focusing on growing their businesses." review the gold plating of EU health and safety regulations which has occurred in this country over recent years.
Ministers have already scrapped the planned extension of the right to request flexible working to parents of 17 year olds. They also intend to give small businesses a three-year exemption from the additional paternity leave scheme which allows mothers and fathers to share the mother's right to maternity leave and pay if they wish.
الرئيسية 
موضوع: Government to cut health and safety inspections by a third 
الثلاثاء مارس 22, 2011 1:57 am
