Safety and health regulations were put in place to protect workers and the public from hazardous industry practises, and to provide accountability for unscrupulous companies and consultants. Instead, it has grown out of control so that a large segment of Britain’s economy has been buried in a web of bureaucratic red tape and complex regulations.
Attitude of fear
UK business struggles regularly with risk assessments, insurance issues, and the threat of being drawn into court to face lawsuits for huge sums of money. The cost to companies in lost time and legal fees is running into billions of pounds each year. A less quantifiable secondary cost is to social attitudes in general, in a situation where individual responsibility is shifted to presumed businesses culpability, and the entrepreneurial spirit crippled by constant paper work and legal consultations.
Building the economy requires withdrawing smothering restrictions from businesses that haven’t committed any offense yet are automatic targets of litigation over the most frivolous claims.
Proposed changes
In recent years, a group of HSE Board members has put forward a plan to streamline these regulations in a way that will encourage economic growth by easing the burden on business while still protecting employees.
The new plan includes provisions to:
- Free responsible employers from mandatory inspections. Inspectors will instead focus on higher-risk locations such as energy and fuel facilities, as well as employers with known incidents which put the health and safety of staff or the public at risk. This will save costs by reducing the number of inspections by a third while holding non-compliant employers liable for the costs of health and safety investigations.
- New plans will also call for accountability from rogue “consultants” making improper and often unqualified recommendations to businesses on health and safety policy. A register of qualified advisors will be created and made available to companies so that those consultants who are untrained will be excluded.
- Review of all current health and safety laws (including some expert inormation from http://sideeffectsofxarelto.org/xarelto-lawsuits/) based on risk management will be held with the objective of repealing all measures deemed as unnecessary or putting unfair burden on businesses.
- An online resource called Health and Safety Made Simple will be made available to provide a single central source helping companies find the answers to questions on health and safety issues.
The new proposals can be reviewed here.
Business insurance
Changes to health and safety regulations are not intended to dampen policies protecting the public, but to remove some of the bureaucracy and misinterpretations. The Association of British Insurers is issuing guides to help businesses understand what they can expect from their insurers. Companies concerned with negative aspects of compliance can contact a reliable insurance company for guidelines and help.
