HSE launches new Health and Work Strategy

The HSE's new Health and Work Strategy (the "Strategy") was launched on 15 December 2016 by the Department for Work and Pensions Minister, Penny Mordaunt. It falls under the umbrella of the over-arching Helping Great Britain Work Well Strategy and builds upon three priority areas identified at a meeting of the HSE board:

1. Occupational stress and related mental health issues;
2. Musculoskeletal disorders (“MSDs”); and
3. Occupational lung disease.

In the Strategy, the HSE claims that their “regulatory activity is evidence-based”. So what do the figures show? The Strategy demonstrates a clear incentive for action: an estimated 1.3 million people who worked in 2015/16 were suffering from an illness they believe was caused or made worse by work.

In order to combat this, the HSE proposes to focus their approach on working with others, championing the need for prevention, and focusing their inspection and enforcement activity where they believe it can have the most effect. According to the Strategy, the regulator will centre interventions, inspection and enforcement on those sectors and activities where the three priority areas (listed above) pose the highest risk. Such a scope is justified on the basis that stress and MSDs together account for 80% of lost working time, with occupational lung disease accounting for 90% of estimated deaths related to exposures at work.

Alongside the central Strategy are three sub-strategies; one for each priority area. In relation to the first priority, HSE notes that work-related stress is the second most commonly reported cause of occupational ill-health in Great Britain. As a result, the HSE plans to launch pilot projects targeting the sectors of education and health and publish a suite of guidance and tools. With regard to the second priority, the Strategy states that MSDs account for 41% of all work-related ill health cases, making them the most common cause of occupational ill health in Great Britain. In light of this, the HSE proposes to develop and promote digital versions of their MSD tools, update their guidance on the subject, and form a new HSE steering group. On the final priority, the HSE reports that occupational lung disease continues to lead to an estimated 13,000 deaths each year. In response, it proposes to create an ‘authoritative leadership’ body, which is to have commissioned an action plan by the end of the year.

Overall, the Strategy’s ambitions are to be welcomed and its progress will be monitored over the course of 2017.