COVID-19 can't hide HSE enforcement woes

摘要

The HSE's enforcement record plummeted to an all-time low in the 12 months to 31 March 2021. The effects of COVID-19 on the workplace, the HSE and the courts account for a large part of what the HSE acknowledges in its annual enforcement statistics publication are "substantial" decreases, but the wider reality is that the huge drops in the numbers of prosecutions and enforcement notices merely exacerbate what was already a troubling underlying trend. The HSE served 2,929 enforcement notices in 2020/21, less than half of the 6,922 issued just one year earlier, which was in itself 2,014 below the 2018/19 level (see table). Although the HSE's enforcement figures are limited to the past five years, previous HSB coverage (based on published HSE information and answers provided to HSB by the HSE) shows the true extent of the decrease. In the five years between 1999/2000 and 2003/04 (HSB 366 p.9), the HSE served an average of 11,627 notices each year (a total of 58,137 notices, ranging from 11,340 to 13,324 notices a year), which leaves the 2020/21 total at just one quarter of that five year average.