The new HSE strategy

摘要

The HSE has published a 10-year strategy that confirms the regulator's pursuit of wider public safety objectives that go well beyond traditional concepts of worker protection, notably in domestic buildings and the green agenda. Launching the strategy, the chair of the HSE Board, Sarah Newton, commented that it "sets out a refreshed set of priorities" for the HSE and emphasised that implementing the strategy "will require even greater collaboration across sectors and industries". In the strategy's introduction, Newton and the HSE's chief executive, Sarah Albon, insist that its five strategic objectives "concentrate our work on areas of greatest health and safety challenge and where we can make the biggest contribution to benefit society". While the strategy is littered with cliched, meaningless phrases - "Working better as one", for example - spread across 14 pages of large type, an accompanying business plan provides detail on the HSE's activities and targets in 2022/23 relating to each of the strategy's five strategic objectives. Together, the strategy and business plan represent a consolidation and continuation of the HSE's response to the demands and expectations placed upon it in recent years from Brexit, COVID-19, the Grenfell Tower fire and the green agenda, rather than a radical change in approach. There is also acknowledgment of the difficulty of securing further significant reduction in injury rates and the continuing shift of emphasis from safety to physical and, increasingly, mental health. "The maturity of business and their increased level of understanding of safety risks means that we can look to regulate in different ways. This should allow us to focus on achieving similar improvements in workplace health," adds the HSE.