Health and Safety - Regulation and Inspection

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforces health and safety legislation for most industry sectors in Great Britain - they cover factories, building sites, mines, farms, fairgrounds, quarries, chemical plant, offshore and nuclear installations, schools, hospitals and other places. The Council enforces health and safety legislation in other workplaces, typically shops, offices, warehouses and leisure settings.

Our objective is to ensure that businesses comply with their legal and moral obligations to protect the health, safety and welfare of employees and the safety of contractors and the public where work activities may pose a risk to their health.

The Council has signed up to the HSE’s Strategy for health and safety, which makes the following commitments:

• We agree to play our part in reducing the numbers of work-related deaths, injuries and ill-health in Great Britain
• We call on employers to put health and safety at the heart of what they do and to take a common-sense approach to health and safety
• We commit ourselves to debunking myths around health and safety that trivialise the impact of injuries, ill-health and deaths on individuals and their families
• We recognise the importance of health and safety in difficult economic times and the dangers of complacency
• We pledge to work with the Health and Safety Executive and its partners to Be part of the solution

We do this by making routine inspections of businesses on a frequency that relates to the risks posed by the activities undertaken by the business.

If you think the information you have been provided with is incorrect or an over application of the legislation and you cannot resolve the issue with your local officer, you may wish to contact the Independent Regulatory Challenge Panel. 

We give advice on safe practices to help businesses and individuals to work safely. We deal with issues including: 

• the reporting of accidents and dangerous occurrences at work,
• inspection of health and safety risk assessments and the physical inspection of systems of work to ensure compliance with the law.

The Council publishes an annual Workplace Health and Safety Law Enforcement Plan. The plan for 2011-2012 can be viewed here