‘Revitalising Health and Safety at Work'
An Evaluation of the Government’s/HSC’s Response to Consultation
Annex 2 - The RoSPA response - an overview
RoSPA has firmly welcomed the Deputy Prime Minister’s decision to commission a strategic review of occupational safety and health (OS&H) - especially since it is taking place during the 25th anniversary of the Health and Safety at Work Act and is building on the consultative approach of HSC/E - which more recently has gone beyond seeking views on specific issues and measures to seek comments on future strategy for OS&H.
The Society has developed a substantial input to this exercise ( ‘Making it Happen’ available from RoSPA), commenting on issues raised in DETR’s/HSC’s strategic appraisal, but in doing so also drawing together a series of policy statements and submissions which it has circulated to ‘key players’ and the main political parties since the run up to the 1997 General Election.
In these submissions RoSPA has focused on the need to further reduce accidental injury and work related health damage but particularly on the need to strengthen the whole ‘health and safety system’ now in place to control work related risks (policy making, OS&H law and standards, management, workforce involvement, enforcement, research and scientific support, information provision, education, training, outreach etc).
In RoSPA’s view, however, this cannot be achieved without empowering other ‘key players’ alongside central bodies such as the Health and Safety Commission and Executive (HSC/E) and enhancing all the factors which are currently ‘driving’ the ‘system’, including: regulation and enforcement; common law claims for damages; workforce and public expectations; and business self interest (for example, reducing costs to businesses due to accidents and work related ill health and enhancing overall standards of business excellence).
RoSPA feels that there is still a widespread failure to understand the current scale of work related risk, harm and loss. Such harm is far more prevalent in Society than generally realised, particularly since, unless they are spectacular or involve multiple casualties, work related accidents or health effects remain largely hidden and private experiences. More work is needed therefore to highlight the scale and depth of the tragedy involved, particularly the scale of the major categories of work-related ill health such as musculo-skeletal disorders, stress linked conditions, respiratory ill health, noise induced hearing loss, vibration injury, occupational cancer and skin disease. And while - understandably - the OH&S ambitions of the workforce are shifting towards a ‘health and happiness’ agenda, it should not be forgotten that people are still dying and being maimed in easily preventable work accidents, particularly in high risk sectors such as (eg in agriculture and in construction). As stressed in the DETR/HSC document, compared with deaths in accidents, some seven times as many are dying after they have left work from fatal diseases associated with a single agent, namely asbestos.
RoSPA therefore very much welcomes the broad aims of the Strategic Appraisal, namely: generating new impetus, stimulating new approaches to improve reductions in levels of risk, harm and loss - especially in small firms and taking into account changing patterns of work and employment and creating synergies with other Government programmes. Obviously the improvement in the reduction in fatalities since the late seventies is to be welcomed - but while some of this has been due to accident reduction, some has also been due to significant changes in hazard exposure as a result of shifts in employment from heavy industry to services. Some other part of the reduction may also have been due to better medical and paramedical intervention following accidents. Fatal accidents are a crude indicator and thus there is a real need to develop more meaningful reactive and proactive measures of national OS&H performance which go beyond rates of fatal or indeed other kinds of physical injury or ill health.
Despite some of the ‘health and safety system’s’ more obvious strengths including: the shift to goal setting legislation using risk assessment; HSE’s professionalism; the involvement of employers and unions; and the growing importance of the health and safety professional, there are also many weaknesses. These include: significant under-resourcing of the HSC/E; widespread ignorance about hazards, risks and control measures; low penalties; lack of economic incentives (for example, no link between health and safety management performance and insurance premia); lack of integration of health and safety into business standards and development programmes (like ISO 9000 and IIP); and the large number of small firms and the major problems they face in responding effectively to new style health and safety legislation. (95% of all UK businesses now employ fewer than 50 employees, accounting for over 45% of the workforce. The fatal accident rate in firms employing fewer than 50 employees, for example, is roughly double that in those employing 1000+.)
However, despite the scale of both new and existing challenges it seems clear that, in the period ahead, there is going to be much less radically new legislation. Although there is still scope for amendments and the clarification of some duties, the legislative and regulatory architecture required is now substantially in place. The key to future progress therefore is going to lie in finding new ways to enhance the implementation of existing requirements in order to achieve underlying regulatory objectives.
In this sense it is important that OH&S is seen as part of the wider public health and public policy agenda and is not isolated as a specialist area - not least because of what it can bring to other policy areas concerned with prevention.
For example, techniques which HSC/E have developed for addressing risk in OH&S also have much to contribute to policy in other areas of safety and health - in particular a risk/evidence based approach, creating goal setting law supported by guidance, use of risk assessment, demonstrating ALARP below ‘intolerability’, use of a risk management systems approach and so on.
There need to be much stronger links between the Government’s plans for public health and plans being developed for OS&H. In particular the HSC/E and the DoH will need to start to develop a co-ordinated strategy for health and safety services, for example by empowering and resourcing Primary Care Groups to enable them to deliver OS&H services to local businesses.
There needs to be much better integration of safety and risk concepts into education and lifelong learning, from primary school to MBAs, so that, in future, people at all levels in society people are fully equipped to understand and manage risk.
Also Government as the biggest single employer and procurer needs to make a new commitment to raise its own OS&H standards and to exercise positive OS&H influence in its dealings with those it engages as contractors and suppliers.
HSC/E however remains a ‘prime mover’ in the overall ‘health and safety system’. In the coming period the HSC’s strategic emphasis has got to be not just on making new regulations and enforcing OS&H law but on ‘making health and safety happen’ . And notwithstanding the need to enhance its advisory and enforcement impact, if it is to revitalise the Robens concept of ‘self regulation’ and to achieve the broader objectives of OS&H regulation, it needs now to widen its focus to take on a much stronger development role in the ‘system’. This means developing a functional map of the ‘system’, identifying the roles of key players within it, and helping to promote and develop those roles. It means concentrating on key ‘system’ support functions, particularly: education; training; services; research; and outreach. It means moving beyond a purely legislative approach to ‘regulation’ and focusing much more on ways of empowering other ‘health and safety system’ players to enable them exercise a much stronger health and safety ‘promoting’ role. This work needs to be given equal status alongside HSE’s established research, policy and enforcement work. In turn this means strengthening the leadership role and raising the profile of the HSC, expanding its advisory base to include representatives of other key interests such as health and safety professionals and ensuring that it exercises greater strategic influence over key parts of the ‘health and safety system’ that lie outside HSC/E.
In part this is beginning to occur with the increased emphasis being given by HSC/E to information provision, awareness raising and working with and through ‘intermediaries’ including via the supply chain. This shift will not come about however unless HSE has the right structures in place, receives a significant further increase in resources and is held more widely accountable for OS&H regulation in its broadest sense. It will also require HSE to strengthen its relationships within the ‘system’ by developing ‘partnership agreements’ with ‘key players’, for example, detailing shared objectives and setting out common goals and development strategies.
RoSPA has already welcomed strategies developed so far for ‘Small Firms’ and ‘Occupational Health’ but even greater impetus in these areas is now required, developing partnership working with key ‘intermediaries’ such as ‘Business Links’ and trade associations to raise awareness with ‘hard-to-reach’ audiences and to ‘signpost’ them to further sources of help making maximum use of information technology.
Other things badly needed include: minimum competence standards for managers; selective mandatory auditing of health and safety management systems; new kinds of economic incentives; new criminal corporate liabilities; more effective sentencing of offenders (for example, use of ‘remedy orders’ under the HSW Act); better coverage by companies of health and safety performance in their annual reports; action on under-recognised issues such as occupational road risk; and a more explicit legal requirement for ‘adequate and suitable’ accident investigation.
HSC/E will also need to strengthen its whole approach to Section 3 of the HSW Act and protection of the public from work related risks, for example, to tackle issues such as drownings at inland water sites, some 337 deaths in 1998, a substantial proportion of which were at ‘work connected’ sites but which were not reported under RIDDOR.
RoSPA believes that, in the medium term, there is a need to establish a new promotional division of HSE to take on a range of strategic tasks, for example setting up new programmes to help develop the OS&H promoting role of key ‘intermediaries’, including banks, trades unions, trade associations, local business development bodies such as chambers and TECs and local RoSPA affiliated H&S groups. Another strategic task is the need to extend HSC/E’s current strategy for developing OS&H training and this in turn will require stronger emphasis on identifying mandatory standards of health and safety competence, from those entering work experience to those exercising strategic leadership of OS&H at board room level.
That emphasis on strategic leadership of OS&H in organisations also requires a stronger focus on the OS&H role of board level directors and issues such as the integration of OS&H with systems for ‘environment’ and ‘quality’ as well as the measurement of health and safety management performance and the development of ‘certificatable’ standards for health and safety management systems.
Roger Bibbings
Occupational Safety Adviser
14th October 1999
|
RoSPA is a registered charity: Registered Charity No: 207823 Patron: Her Majesty the Queen RoSPA Head Office: Edgbaston Park, 353 Bristol Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7ST, UK |
 |