After the constent barrage of cuts to the H.S.E and health and safety regulations, i just thought i'de try to dispel some of the myths that this goverment will have you believe,by saying we have too many health and safety regulations.HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS
In 1974 an appndix to the robins report listed 10 main statues and 452 statutory instruments relating to safety. This means that the number of reulations in 1974 was 462.
In the HSE 's review of the health and safety regulations published in may 1994, the HSE said it was responsible for 28 pieces of primary legislation and 367 sets of health and safety regulations.It also stated that the commissions programme had led to the removal of 350 sets of regulations,replacing them with around 100 sets of modern regulations
The HSE website as at April 2009 lists 17 pieces of primary legislations and 231 statutory instruments owned and enforced by the HSE/Local Authorities as at April 2009, this means we have 46% less regulation than 35 years ago and 37% less than just 15 years ago.
It is also not just the number of regulations that have declined, over the last three years the HSE has reduced the number of forms used for collecting information from business from 127 to 54 -a 57.5% reduction.
And in 1999/2000 the number of inspections made by a field operations division inspector was 75,272. in 2008/09 the number of recorded inspections was 23,004. this is a fall of 69.5% in 10 years
Also.the number of premises that are covered by the field Operations Division is 884,000 covering 15 milion workers.This means the average premises could expect a visit by an HSE inspector once every 38 years.
According to research conducted by the goverment in 2005 called the "Administrative burdens measurement Exercise" the average firm spends approximately 20 hours and just over £350 a year on the administrative cost of complying with the regulations(mainly risk assessments). This figure includes a considerable number of very large firms,it is clear that the normal cost for smaller companies will be considerably less.
as you can see from the stats above the HSE as been reducing regulations and inspections nearly ever year from the start of the 1974 regulations.