Trust the good to beat the bad

Good firms should be trusted to 'get on with the job' of health and safety, so that enforcement officers could spend more time clamping down on rogue businesses, it was suggested this week.

In its submission to the Health and Safety Commission's (HSC) consultation on its future strategy, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) put forward a number of 'radical' proposals.

The HSC published its thoughts for 2010 and beyond in October, at which time HSC chair Bill Callaghan said he hoped the document would "stimulate a wide debate". The consultation period ended this week.

RoSPA urged the Health and Safety Executive to get tough on businesses with poor health and safety records, while leaving high performers to get on with the job without intervention.

Roger Bibbings, RoSPA occupational safety adviser, said: "It would be a mistake if poor performers thought that the Health and Safety Commission and Executive had gone soft on enforcement.

"We want to see a system under which higher performing companies, which also make use of independent external audit, could be put on trust to manage their own health and safety risks without HSE intervention. This would free up more inspector resources to deal with persistently poor employers.

"RoSPA has suggested a new system of remedial sentencing to compel persistent offenders to undergo retraining and to implement health and safety management improvement plans under the supervision of external experts. This approach would be underpinned by use of suspended fines, which would have to be paid if businesses did not come up to scratch."

The safety organisation also emphasised its view that "every major employer should be challenged to adopt effective, independent audit" and that the HSC should be doing more to encourage this.

Work-related road safety
RoSPA said it was "very concerned" that the Health and Safety Commission was continuing to leave work-related road safety out of it priority programme.

It added that the HSC should accept that the issue was part of "mainstream health and safety" and that it should increase staff resources devoted to the management of occupational road risks (MORR).

According to RoSPA, road accidents are the single biggest cause of work related accidental death.

Its response to the HSC argued: "Between 800 and 1000 people are being killed annually in work related road traffic accidents as opposed to some 450 fatalities which are currently being notified annually under the Reporting of Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR)."

RoSPA added: "The suggestion that the prevention of road accidents while at work is not really part of occupational health and safety is ill founded. When a person is killed in an accident while at work, whether or not they were engaged in activities that were taking place on an employer's premises or were on the public road is largely irrelevant.

"The more exposure employees have to the road environment, the more likely they are to be involved in an accident. The accident has occurred while the employee was engaged on their employer's business and could possibly have been prevented or its effects mitigated by appropriate employer action."

Other recommendations
RoSPA said it supported the HSC's emphasis on building a better system of compensation for workplace injury, agreeing that the "rehabilitation agenda" was "vitally important for both individuals, the future labour market".

However, it suggested that one area where "better joined up government" was needed was health and safety development in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs).

RoSPA's submission read: "Health and safety still needs to be much more effectively embedded in the work of the Learning and Skills Councils, the Small Business Service and schemes like Investors in People etc, so that all these bodies and schemes are capable of playing a much stronger part in delivering health and safety services, including health and safety training and are capable of addressing health needs at work."

Among a raft of other recommendations RoSPA also proposed that the HSC's constitution - including its advisory committees - be "opened up to reflect the diversity of key players."

RoSPA's response to the HSC document "A Strategy for Workplace Health and Safety in Great Britain to 2010 and beyond" can be accessed via the "occupational safety" section of its website (see link).

Johnny Thomson