Occupational Health a top priority for LA enforcement

Usdaw welcomes the inclusion of health at work as one of the top 5 enforcement priorities for Local Authorities.

The Rogers review of Local Authority regulatory activities has concluded that enforcement of workplace health should be one of the top five priorities. The review looked at the 60 or so regulatory responsibilities of local authorities to identify the ones that should be national priorities because of their impact and significance.

The report concluded that workplace health must be a priority because of the numbers affected. Over 500,000 workers per year suffer work-related ill health in local authority enforced sectors. The direct cost to employers in these sectors is £600 million. The vast majority of Usdaw members who work in shops, warehouses and offices are covered by local authority inspectors.

Doug Russell, Usdaw Health and Safety Officer,. said ' We are pleased that the Rogers review recognised the importance of local authority regulatory activity on workplace health. Many local authorities already do a lot of work in this area. And some have worked with Usdaw on the health and safety issues that matter to our members. LAs such as Bury, Westminster and Bath and North East Somerset, for example, have worked with us on reducing violence to retail staff. However, many other LAs still need to do more. As the table shows, nationally LA resources devoted to health and safety enforcement have not recovered from the decline in the 1990s. Some of the increased attention to health and safety enforcement is down to the improved partnership between the HSE and LAs. It has taken several years to build the partnership. It is vitally important that HSE continues to work with the LAs. We all know the pressure that HSE is under as result of its current financial situation, but it needs to maintain its national and regional links with LAs through its partnership managers.'

The unions is calling on its health and safety activists to ask their local councillors how their local authority is meeting its responsibilities to enforce health and safety laws.

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