Central planks of the Government/Health and Safety Commission's current health and safety strategy are "inconsistent with the national and international published research on the most effective strategies to improve worker and public safety”, says a report published today by the Centre for Corporate Accountability.

The report, "Making Companies Safe: What Works?" raises serious questions about the Government’s claimed commitment to pursue policies that are ‘evidence-based’.
The purpose of the report was to consider whether published research supported two recent significant shifts in Government/HSC policy:

• a decision not to impose legal safety duties upon company directors, and to rely instead on voluntary guidance to persuade directors to change the way they deal with safety;
• a new strategy, in relation to existing health and safety law, of moving away from using formal enforcement mechanisms (like inspections, investigations and prosecutions) to “new ways of securing compliance voluntarily”

In relation to the first shift, the report states that:
"All the major reviews of the international literature conclude that the most important driver of management action to improve occupational health and safety performance is legal regulation. This finding is mirrored in the UK research, where the need to comply with the law was the most commonly cited reason for health and safety initiatives amongst all sizes of organisations. .. [W]holly voluntary approaches – in the form of voluntary codes of conduct for example – are largely ineffective in bringing about improved standards of health or safety performance."

In relation to the second shift, the report states:
"Recent HSE proposals to shift resources away from front-line inspection, investigation and enforcement activity are contrary to the evidence which strongly suggests that HSE could have a significantly greater impact by increasing inspection and enforcement activity."

The report was researched and written by Dr Courtney Davis, CCA’s Deputy Director who is also a research fellow at the University of Sussex. The report's conclusions reflects those of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions which stated that the HSE should double the number of inspectors and increase its enforcement activities.

[Read the report]