Making Companies Safe - what works? (CCA ... - Unite the Union

At the same time, the proportionate increase in the number of inspections, will certainly mean
the number of investigations will decrease, and the HSC have amended its investigation
criteria further limiting the kinds of serious injuries that inspectors will be required to
investigate. For instance, no scalpings will need to be investigated under the new criteria. 11
Many more types of serious injury – many of which are likely to have arisen out of unsafe
conditions and systems within the workplace – will go completely uninvestigated.
This has worrying implications for prevention at both the general, and at the organisationspecific
levels. At a general level the risk of reputational damage to companies is reduced since
the role of the regulator in detecting serious safety failures and in allocating blame is
diminished. At the organisation-specific level, companies may be less likely to take remedial,
or sufficient, action in the absence of some sort of enforcement activity by a regulator,
allowing dangerous conditions to persist.
There is clearly an overwhelming case to be made for far higher levels of inspection and
investigation. This case can be made on the basis of three major reviews of the national
and international research, 12 which consistently stress the need for high actual or perceived
levels of contact between companies and regulators, and it can also be made on the basis
comments made by UK employers themselves that current levels of enforcement are too low
to provide a deterrent.
Levels of Prosecution
The research indicates that the threat and reality of prosecution are crucial motivators for
health and safety compliance. Consequently, it is cause for concern that there was a 13%
decrease in the number of prosecutions taken by HSE inspectors in 2002/3 compared to the
previous year, from 1059 to 933; in fact there has been a year on year decrease in the number
of prosecutions over the last four years. 13
A recent analysis of HSE’s prosecution data shows that only:
• about one third of all worker deaths and one sixth of all member of the public deaths;
• about one tenth of all investigated major injuries to workers and one twentieth of all
investigated major injuries to members of the public; and
• about one twentieth of all investigated dangerous occurrences
resulted in a prosecution. 14
The low levels of prosecution, particularly following investigations into major injuries and
dangerous occurrences are worrying. The limiting factor here is not the level of evidence but
the criteria set out in HSC’s Enforcement Policy Statement about which types of incidents
should result in a prosecution assuming sufficient evidence exists (i.e when it is in the
“public interest” to prosecute).
So, for example, whilst the criteria requires that a prosecution should take place if there is
evidence to show that a “death” was the result of a breach of the law, this is not the case in
relation to major injuries or dangerous occurrences.
The research evidence would suggest that if the HSE wants to maximise the potential of
investigations, it should widen out the criteria that justified prosecution action.
One of the issues that is often raised in relation to prosecutions is whether or not they are
cost effective – since they take up a lot of inspector time. There is no question that
prosecutions are expensive compared to other enforcement mechanisms. So for instance one
senior HSE official is quoted as saying in a recent study by researchers from Oxford University
that:
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“We found in the efficiency scrutiny that the very simplest case where there was
to all intents and purposes an open and shut case, where we had a guilty plea in
a magistrates’ court, then the resource input from HSE to that case was at least