11 September: Following the Government’s announcement yesterday about the blitz on red tape blitz to boost business growth, Helen Brooks, Partner specialising in Health and Safety at Charles Russell’s Employment and Pensions Group comments: "The Government’s announcement that it will be introducing binding new rules which will exempt significant numbers of businesses from proactive health and safety inspections will be welcomed by employers. It is intended that from April 2013 inspections will be limited to those operating in higher risk areas such as construction or where the business has had an incident or a track record of poor performance in health and safety. The Government aims to introduce a new binding statutory Code, which will be consulted on later this month, under which HSE will direct all Local Authority inspections and which will rule out proactive inspections of low-risk businesses. This is a sensible solution to reducing the time-consuming and costly inspections currently carried out by either Local Authority or HSE inspectors. The Government is also proposing to introduce draft legislation next month aimed at ensuring businesses will only be held liable for civil damages in health and safety cases if they can be shown to have acted negligently. This means that employers who have complied with their health and safety duties will no longer be automatically liable for damages, as is currently the case.
"Both of these initiatives, also announced in the Budget as part of the Government’s intention to 'scrap or improve' 84% of health and safety legislation, follow on from its Red Tape Challenge and reviews commissioned from Lord Young and Professor Lofstedt into reducing the burden of health and safety on business in order to stimulate economic growth. Government research found that health and safety is a top concern overall for employers with 13% identifying it as the biggest recruitment deterrent and of particular concern to micro-businesses. These changes are clearly a step in the right direction to help low-risk law-abiding businesses grow."
