HSE Plans to Cut Back on Accident Investigation

The HSE is planning to reduce the number of major injuries that its inspectors will investigate, and the amount of time that its inspectors will spend on the investigations that they do carry out.

These plans are contained in new instructions that the HSE have sent to its inspectors. The instruction to reduce time spent on investigations is already in force throughout Britain. The plan to reduce the number of investigations is being piloted in the North West of England - though the intention is for this to go Nationwide.

The purpose of these changes is to increase the time that its inspectors can spend on inspections and other similiar preventative activity.

The HSE believes that the organisation has become too focused on the investigation of deaths, injuries and other incidents and should restore a largely preventative focus. HSE states in its new instruction that: "Time spent on investigation work by the Field Operations Directorate (FOD, the health and safety inspectors which comprise 90 per cent of HSE's activities) has risen substantially since the revised [investigation] criteria were introduced in April 2001. With finite resources, this work has been completed at the expense of preventive work.

To get a better balance FOD has looked at both its management of investigations and the incident selection criteria. FOD envisages an increase in proactive activity to halfway between the current position and that in 1995/96. This should still meet the pressure to investigate a higher proportion of reported injuries [than HSE did in the late nineties] while restoring a largely preventive focus."

Reducing time spent on investigations

HSE inspectors have been instructed to conclude investigations as early as possible. This instruction came into force in June 2003.

The HSE argues that: "A review of the time we spent on investigations last year showed that while the number of investigations had dropped, the total time spent on them had remained the same. To help to sharpen the focus of our investigation effort and better manage investigations we revised existing FOD wide performance standards and included new criteria for concluding investigation."

David Bergman, Director of the Centre for Corporate Accountability (CCA) expressed doubts about this new policy, commenting: "There must be a concern that the explicit instruction to 'conclude investigations as early as possible' could result in inspectors feeling under pressure to conclude an inquiry with undue haste when other reasonable lines of enquiry could be made - even though this is not the intention of the HSE."

Reducing Injuries Investigated

The HSE has revised the criteria used by inspectors to determine which of the reported injuries should be investigated. These are currently being piloted in the North West of England and the HSE admits that they will result in fewer investigations being initiated.

The new criteria will mean that:

- No longer will, all amputations of digit(s) past the first joint be investigated.

Now, only those amputations of digits past the first joint where the incident involved potential for more than one finger or for hand/arm amputation.

- No longer will there be a requirement to investigate serious multiple fractures (of more than one bone, not including wrist or ankle) from whatever cause.

Now it will only be necessary to investigate such injuries if they result from a crush injury or they are associated with workplace transport or falls from height.

- It will no longer be necessary to investigate scalpings.

- It will no longer be necessary to investigate any incident which arose out of working in a confined space.

At present the HSE investigates about 20 per cent of major injuries reported to it. In 2000/01 this was around 4,330 out of 22,400 reported injuries - an increase from five years earlier where it only investigated 10 per cent of major injuries. If the HSE were to reduce the number of injuries investigated to a level midway between 1996/7 and 2000/01 a total of 15 per cent of major injuries will be investigated - around 1000 fewer injuries than current levels, a fall of 25 per cent.

The HSE are however cautious in stating exactly how many fewer injuries will be investigated and what the percentages will be.

These new instructions comes in the wake of a below inflation increase in resources - announced by the Government in December 2002. The effect of this, according to CCA analysis, is that the £260m that the HSE can spend in 2005/6 will be £12m less than the amount that a simple inflation increase (of 3 per cent) would have given. It will in fact result in HSE spending less money in 2005/6 than it will be spending in 2003/4.

The HSE however argues that these changes have nothing to do with budget cuts - but how the HSE manages the resources that it is given.


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