Contractors have called for changes in the way the Health and Safety Executive operates, Construction News reported.
The call comes as Lord Young prepares to announce the results of his review into safety legislation. In a paper submitted to Lord Young, the UK Contractors Group said the HSE needed to change but that the regulatory regime did not.
It said underperforming areas, such as refurbishment projects run by smaller contractors, could be tackled through the HSE “re-prioritising” its work.
The submission highlighted the high-profile issue of fire risk and claimed the safety watchdog had adopted a “tick box” method to dealing with the problem, which has attracted much more attention following a series of incidents including two fires on Greenacre Homes’ sites in south London in the last twelve months.
The paper said: “HSE construction inspectors have been undertaking specialist training in this area, resulting in many more statutory improvement notices served on contractors for so-called breaches that have never been picked up before.”
Instead, the UKCG recommended that the HSE target site inspections more effectively to highlight bad practice.
It claimed that despite improvements in self-regulation, UKCG members received a “disproportionate” number of inspections and had a higher level of enforcement taken against them.
“Analysis of the fatal incidents in construction shows that around 75 per cent occur on small projects within small contractors,” it said. “There is clearly an underperforming tail which needs to be addressed.”
The Civil Engineering Contractors Association echoed the UKCG’s view that changes in legislation were not needed.
CECA technical officer John Wilson said: “A major concern of the construction industry, when considering health and safety legislation, relates to the complicated interaction of regulations.
“For example, a small alteration in one set of regulations has the potential to interact with other regulations to the detriment of the framework as a whole.”
He added: “Health and safety law has been much-criticised lately regarding the need to eliminate concerns over ‘compensation culture’. But it may well be counterproductive to change or reduce the impact of those regulations to the detriment of workers and their safety and health. We need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
