There has been a lot of ‘noise’ in recent days about Government plans to scrap or overhaul over 3,000 regulations as part of its red tape blitz, with hospitality businesses – along with many others – no longer to face burdensome health and safety inspections.
Here’s what has actually been said in the Press Release issued on the subject (see link below) which is specific in outlining the plans – and makes it clear that businesses will not be exempt from h & s inspections ‘if they have an incident or a track record of poor performance’. It reads (in part):
“From April 2013, the Government intends to introduce binding new rules on both the Health & Safety Executive and on local authorities that will exempt hundreds of thousands of businesses from burdensome, regular health & safety inspections.
“In future, businesses will only face health and safety inspections if they are operating in higher risk areas such as construction, or if they have an incident or a track record of poor performance.
“In addition, the Government will introduce legislation next month to ensure that businesses will only be held liable for civil damages in health and safety cases if they can be shown to have acted negligently. This will end the current situation where businesses can automatically be liable for damages even if they were not actually negligent.
“The Government is also taking radical action on red tape in a further measure to boost growth and jobs in the economy. The Government is systematically examining some 6,500 substantive regulations that it inherited through the Red Tape Challenge process. The Government is now committing to abolish or substantially reduce at least 3,000 of these regulations and it will complete the identification of the regulations to be scrapped or overhauled by December 2013.”
A note to the Release spells out in more detail the plans for h & s inspections:
“Currently, low-risk businesses face proactive health & safety inspection, such as visits, either by Local Authority or by HSE inspectors. From April 2013, there will be a new, binding, statutory Code under which HSE will direct all Local Authority inspections and this will rule out proactive inspections of low-risk businesses except where there has been a genuine employee complaint or real incident flagged to HSE. The HSE will also not inspect low risk businesses and will be bound by the same principles as in the Code for Local Authorities. Low risk businesses will include office based businesses, shops, hotels, restaurants, leisure premises and pubs & clubs.”
For the full press release click here