HSE business plan 2017/18

The HSE has published its Business Plan for the year ahead, outlining what it intends to deliver in 2017/2018. The Plan is pitched against the background of UKCS as “one of the safest places in the world to work”, but with an acknowledgement that “health and safety statistics are also a stark reminder of the challenges we face in continuing to improve Britain’s performance”.

HSE Business Plan 2016/2017

HSE’s previous Business Plan was dominated by budget cuts. Nevertheless, during that year, HSE succeeded in developing the Health and Work strategy and sector plans, as well as launching its Helping Great Britain work well strategy. The latter recognised over 100 commitments made by over 80 industry trade union and other groups to improve health and safety in their workplaces and industries. The HSE also reports that, amongst other things, it achieved reassessment of all offshore transitional safety cases and COMAH 2015 safety cases within the required timescales; commenced publication of offshore topic performance scores; and completed a targeted programme of proactive inspections at major hazard sites both on and offshore.

Notably, HSE also consulted on proposals to place more emphasis on risk control and less on written assessment. In October, it proposed changes to its guidance document, INDG163 - Risk assessment: A brief guide to controlling risks in the workplace. The proposed changes reflected the HSE’s concern that organisations see the recording of risk assessments as something separate from other things they do to manage their business. The HSE now reports that this has provided the necessary insight to undertake a wider review of how well HSE guidance focuses on simple, proportionate messages about risk management. We can expect a renewed campaign from the regulator which seeks to change dutyholders’ mind-sets and overhaul perceptions that risk assessments (and other health and safety management measures) may be overly-burdensome, paper-heavy exercises.

Themes

As with the previous Business Plan, the 2017/2018 version is framed around four overarching themes. These are, firstly, to lead and engage with others to improve workplace health and safety; secondly, to provide an effective regulatory framework; thirdly, to secure effective management and control of risk; and, fourthly, to reduce the likelihood of low-frequency, high-impact catastrophic incidents.

Theme: Leading and engaging

The Helping Great Britain work well strategy will be in place until 2020 and promotes six principles, including “Acting Together” and “Sharing our success”. The HSE is now looking to capitalise on this collaborative momentum. Its focus for the year ahead will be on engagement and collaboration, involving specific campaign activity and guidance and support materials, as well as the identification of science and evidence which would support its regulatory activities.

This particular thematic tone is to be manifested through five key priorities. These are:

1. The establishment and commencement of a comprehensive three-year Health and Work programme, designed to reduce levels of work-related stress, musculoskeletal disorders and occupational lung diseases (with delivery plans to be published in Q2);
2. The use of HSE’s knowledge of small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”) and their risk profile to target groups where the most impact can be had, introducing new approaches to enable those SMEs to manage health and safety sensibly and proportionately (with a programme plan to be presented to the HSE Board in Q4);
3. The embedding of a “broader ownership” of health and safety through the Helping Great Britain work well strategy and associated campaign, engaging with relevant stakeholders to obtain buy-in to the priorities in the HSE’s sector plans (deliverables include a stakeholder event to take place in Q3);
4. The development of the HSE website, emphasising user-focused content (with a finalised design proposal to be tested with target users in Q4); and
5. The reinforcement of links with other regulators through the sharing of technical expertise and enhancement of regulatory information and intelligence networks (with two pilot projects to be completed in Q2).

Theme: An effective regulatory framework

The HSE’s primary target within this heading revolves around supporting the UK’s exit from the European Union. HSE wishes to “tackle the challenges of blue tape where the bureaucratic demands placed by businesses on each other can be disproportionate to the risks faced”. The last deliverable on the Plan’s list (though no doubt not intended as an indication of its relative importance) is to develop an evidence base relating to blue tape which can be presented to the HSE board along with a proposals to address such issues.

Alongside this goal, HSE also aims to undertake a review of the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority; amend the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 to introduce flexibility in the timings of annual gas safety checks; implement the recommendations of the review of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012; and implement the occupational health and safety parts of the Basic Safety Standards Directive. It is unlikely that we will see immediate progress on these fronts: the majority of deliverables are due later in the year, around Q3 and Q4.

Theme: Effective risk management and control

The HSE highlights that although its primary focus as a regulator is to prevent harm to workers, their “regulatory interest extends to cover the impact of work activities on the general public, consumers and the environment”. It is therefore important to implement and support a range of regulatory tools that engage with a wide variety of duty-holders beyond the private sector. Throughout, the regulator’s core priority is ensuring that persons are held to account for their failures, and that this is done through “firm, but fair” enforcement.

In pursuit of this, the HSE will undertake a targeted programme of approximately 20,000 proactive inspections in 2017/2018. At least 500 inspections will be targeted at each of the following sectors: agriculture, construction refurbishment, manufacturing of fabricated metal, manufacturing relating to food, waste and recycling, and manufacturing involving woodworking; with 1000 inspections to be carried out in relation to asbestos removal projects.

Readers may also recall an article in our October 2016 Newsletter reporting on the criticisms of delays in the fatal accident investigation process. The HSE reports that they have improved the timeliness of their investigations, with 80% of fatal investigations being completed within 12 months of the HSE assuming primacy (compared to a 2015/2016 average of 70%). The new Plan proposes an improvement for 2017/2018, with 90% of investigations to be completed within 12 months of the incident.

Theme: Reducing catastrophic incidents

The particular character of the Great British workplace is such that we have many highly specialised and economically crucial industries, including offshore oil, gas and renewable energy; onshore chemicals; and mining. However, HSE acknowledges that these can “potentially cause great harm to […] workers, the environment and the public if not properly managed”. On that basis, major hazard dutyholders are “subject to a level of regulatory scrutiny proportionate to their risks and performance”.

In the coming year stakeholders can expect, amongst other things, greater informal interaction with the HSE as they seek to strengthen leadership and worker engagement across all major hazard sectors; a developed regulatory approach to decommissioning and ageing infrastructure; and targeted interventions focused on the control of high-consequence risks from cooling towers, fairgrounds and major construction projects. The HSE will, for instance, look to undertake a programme of return visits to poorly performing dutyholders to ensure that legionella risks continue to be effectively managed, and will deliver a targeted programme of inspections of fairground rides with known safety issues at both fixed parks and travelling fairs.

Additional highlights

Further noteworthy key deliverables and milestones listed in the Plan include:

• Supporting SMEs with REACH 2018 registration;
• Delivering a new digital platform for radiological protection registration and licensing and asbestos licensing;
• Completing 90% of pesticide evaluation and 80% of biocide evaluations within the legislative deadlines;
• Implementing project-specific intervention plans to assure compliance with CDM 2015 through targeted inspection during the construction phase of major construction projects; and
• Developing a strategy for cybersecurity in the chemicals sector.

Financial Outlook

Evidently, the HSE has many ambitions for the year ahead – but what means does it have by which to achieve these? Taxpayer-funded income for 2017/2018 is largely equal to that forecast by the previous plan, being £136 million (opposed to the forecasted £135.6 million). Turning to the years ahead, this income is expected to sit at £128.4 million in 2019/2020 which, though lower than the current figure, is £5 million more than what was budgeted for in 2015/2016. The new Plan appears to be largely cured of the budget cuts from which the previous plan suffered, with the future outlook seeming increasingly positive.

Comment

The 2017/2018 Business Plan sets out the way in which HSE intends to position itself to improve occupational health and safety. In implementing the measures set out above, the HSE hopes to act “as a catalyst […] to achieve behaviour change”. The benefits of continual improvement are substantial – for workers, businesses, and the wider economy alike. In the previous year, 144 workers were killed and 1.3 million were recorded as suffering from a work-related illness. Similarly, work-related injuries and ill health cost the economy £14 billion in 2014/2015. The tone of the new Business Plan is both clear and welcome: whilst the UK has performed consistently well in health and safety compared to other large economics and the EU average, complacency should always be avoided.

The HSE’s Business Plan 2017/2018 can be accessed from their website.