Construction News March 2013

IOSH 2013 - MATERIAL BREACHES FOUND IN UP TO A THIRD OF INSPECTIONS SINCE FFI

Between a quarter and a third of inspections carried out by the HSE since its cost-recovery scheme came into force found a material breach of health and safety law, resulting in a fee for intervention (FFI) on the duty-holders involved.

This was revealed at the IOSH Conference on 26 February by Mr Ashton. The first run of invoices, which was initiated last month, has so far seen 1400 bills sent out to errant duty-holders.

Briefly explaining how the scheme works it was said that for companies that comply with the law in all significant respects, the HSE's advice is free, while those who don't will be charged for its time to put things right.

"We won't go looking for breaches, easy targets, or deep pockets. And there are no financial targets for inspectors. We won't change what we do, which is look at sites, see what's wrong, assess the significance of that and act accordingly. If there is a material breach, it will trigger a bill for our time."

The FFI procedure works as follows:
The company will get a formal notice of contravention, which will include details of what is wrong (i.e the contravention itself), what action is required, and information about FFI. This covers the entirety of the inspection process and the time necessary afterwards to report on that work - all of which is charged at £124 per hour.

"FFI may apply where an enforcement notice or prosecution is not appropriate, so they are not triggers for FFI. But FFI almost always applies where formal enforcement action is taken in relation to a material breach."

Invoices are sent after two months, and the duty-holder has 30 days to pay. There is a formal disputes and queries mechanism.

Consistency of approach by individual inspectors was raised as a question by a delegate, to which Mr Ashton responded: "We follow the Enforcement Management Model, and our thought processes and internal guidance are all available to everyone to view, so there is total transparency. We also have a peer-review process, which, professionally, is extremely valuable. And there are 100-per-cent quality checks on all invoices we issue."

He concluded: "I think FFI is here to stay and, some years from now, we will be glad we did it."

Source: www.shponline.co.uk