HSE cost recovery scheme

Bad employers will soon have to reimburse the HSE under the Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012.

A cost recovery scheme — known as Fee for Intervention — is expected to come into force on 1 October under which employers which are in sufficiently serious breach of safety rules will be billed £124 an hour by the HSE for the work it does regulating them.

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. Firms who manage workplace risks properly will not pay.”

However, Mike Clancy, general secretary-designate 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.”