Press release

Boosting business by easing health and safety burden – 84% of rules scrapped or improved

Eighty four per cent of health and safety rules will have been scrapped or improved in this Parliament, freeing employers from unnecessary red tape.

From:
Department for Work and Pensions, Health and Safety Executive and The Rt Hon Lord Freud
Published
16 January 2015
This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

The Department for Work and Pensions has taken a ‘One in Two Out’ approach to rules, with those covering health and safety halved without compromising or diluting health and protection for workers.

Further savings are forecast for industry by revising electrical product testing guidance, a move which could produce a £30 million windfall in offices across the country.

The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) essential work to stop people being injured or made ill at work has helped work related injuries fall by 85% over the past 40 years, making Britain’s workplaces safer than ever before.

Work and Pensions Minister, Lord Freud said:

Thanks to the hard work of HSE’s staff to simplify regulations and remove unnecessary requirements, businesses have been boosted and workers have never been safer.

By making it easier for businesses to understand what they need to do on health and safety, they can protect their staff and concentrate on prospering rather than pointless box-ticking.

Chair of HSE, Judith Hackitt added:

We have a proud history of worker protection and we continue to work with business and others to ensure that regulations are appropriate and effective.

As an organisation, we’ve completed a comprehensive review of our stock of legislation, delivered a substantial package of reforms and reduced the regulatory burden – all without compromising or diluting protection for workers.

More information

The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through:

  • research
  • information and advice
  • promoting training
  • new or revised regulations and codes of practice
  • working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement

The highlights for HSE regarding the government’s better regulation drive are:

  • Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, giving HSE its largest One In, Two Out (OITO) of £19.6 million
  • in total HSE has been able to contribute £21.25 million of savings to business under OITO in this Parliament
  • Mines Regulations 2014, consolidating and modernising 45 existing sets of regulations and the relevant parts of 2 Acts of Parliament with new single set of regulations laying down specific, goal-setting requirements for the safe management of mines

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Updates to this page

Published 16 January 2015