By Anne Lewin, Brentwood Labour Party
Recent reports published by the Labour Research Department (LRD), have revealed the drastic extent to which cuts in government funding to public services are risking the health, safety and indeed lives of the general public.
Papers from the December board meeting of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that the number of visits by council Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) to the business premises that they are responsible for inspecting have collapsed in the last seven years; from 188,400 in 2010/11 to 52,600 in the last financial year.
Council enforcement officers are responsible for enforcing health and safety law in business premises such as offices, shops, care homes, catering, leisure, wholesale, childcare and nurseries, garages and petrol stations. According to the professionals’ union Prospect, the fall in inspections is even starker when compared with 450,000 visits in 1995/96, (a fall of 397,400) a decline of over 88%!
Inspection every 38 years
On the basis of these figures Prospect calculates that the average local authority-regulated business can now expect an inspection only once every 38 years!
What the LRD report does not mention, but the board meeting papers do, is that the HSE board go on to discuss whether local authorities can continue to be responsible for delivery of Health and Safety enforcement in these premises and to consider the impact in terms of cost and other resources of the HSE taking back ownership of enforcement in these areas: “The horizon scanning [referring to a rough estimate of costs] undertaken by HSE suggests that the financial and other restraints placed upon local authorities pose a possible risk to the on-going operation of the existing LA/HSE co-regulatory model. This would impact upon the GB regulatory system; and would require significant resources if HSE was required to replace the LA enforcement service”.
Fire Service inspections reduced
Prospect also report that fire services in England had carried out 40% fewer audits in 2017/18 compared with 2010/11, according to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS). https://www.prospect.org.uk/news/id/2019/00062
Legal responsibility for fire safety in buildings in England and Wales sits with a “responsible person”, such as the owner or managing agent. Fire services have responsibility for checking whether the responsible person has complied with their legal duties, such as whether they’ve carried out a fire risk assessment.
The HMICFRS report said there were common features across services graded as inadequate or requiring improvement. “Many do not have enough qualified inspectors to carry out their inspection programmes,” it said. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, responded that the report findings were “the stark reality of austerity – services are overstretched and under-resourced, and unable to fulfil key parts of their remit”. And this in the post-Grenfell period, when you might reasonably expect fire safety to be at the top of the government’s agenda.
Clearly the Tories can’t wait until after Brexit to have a bonfire of Health and Safety legislation, which to them is only so much ‘red tape’. By tying the hands of the enforcement bodies, they are already ensuring that the welfare and lives of ordinary people are disregarded in the interests of cutting budgets for public services.
February 20, 2019
