06 September 2012
From 1 October 2012 the HSE will be able to recover costs from you by charging a fee for the time and effort it spends investigating incidents and taking enforcement action to put things right. This is called a fee for intervention (FFI)
The fee will be charged if the HSE identifies a material breach of the health and safety law and will be based on the amount of time that the inspector has had to spend identifying the breach, helping you to put it right, investigating and taking enforcement action up until the matter is reported to the Health and Safety Division.
The HSE has indicated that a material breach is where you have broken the law and the inspector judges this is serious enough for them to notify you in writing. This will either be a notification of contravention, an improvement or prohibition notice, or a prosecution but the level of enforcement has to be proportionate to the circumstances and it will be possible to dispute the content of the invoices, but if unsuccessful then the costs of dealing with the dispute will be passed on.
The procedures for dealing with appeals against improvement and prohibition notices remains unchanged. If the notice is cancelled by the employment tribunal then the HSE will repay the FFI and if the company is found not guilty after trial of a health and safety offence then the HSE will repay the FFI relating to that offence in full.
The inspector will record the time they have spent identifying the material breach, helping you to put it right, investigating and taking enforcement action including time spent carrying out visits, including all the time on site during which the material breach was identified, writing letters, notices, reports, taking statements and getting specialist support for complex issues and this will be charged at an hourly rate which is currently set at £124. The HSE will also pass on any fees incurred by experts from the Health and Safety Laboratory or any other external experts that they instruct.
This new FFI provides a financial incentive to try to ensure that companies comply with health and safety legislation. At bto we have a team of health and safety specialists who can provide expert compliance advice and assistance about how to deal with the HSE during investigations.