Safety charges pay

The new Fee for Intervention scheme, which was introduced by the HSE last October, is generating considerable revenue.

Under the Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012, organisations which are in sufficiently serious breach of safety rules are to be billed by the HSE for the work it does in regulating them.

HSE Inspectors can charge out their time at £124 an hour. And the sums that the HSE can bill organisations include the costs of inspection, investigation and taking enforcement action.

In the first two months of the scheme operating, the HSE has issued 1,418 invoices. The total sum sought is £727,645 — though the average bill is just £513.

Gordon MacDonald, programme director for the HSE, said: “It is right that those who break the law should pay their fair share of the costs to put things right — and not the public purse.”

However, Mike Clancy, general secretary of the health and safety professionals’ union Prospect, said that it is “counter-productive to create a culture where organisations come to resent inspections, when the priority is to work with them to prevent accidents and keep workers safe”.