HSE Restarts Site Inspections

The Health and Safety Executive has announced it’s resuming with construction site inspections.

As the construction industry in England begins to return to work after lockdown the HSE has announced its resuming site inspections.

The regulator has said it’s adjusting the focus of its activities including visits to business premises and sites which will be conducted in line with social distancing regulations and guidelines.

The HSE’s activities will continue to be guided by the specific requirements and characteristics of the sectors it regulates and in line with advice from the UK Government and Public Health Bodies.

The HSE has stated it will:

• continue to work closely with, and across, industry sectors to enable businesses to put practical measures in place to help people get back to work safely, while remaining compliant with public health and health and safety at work requirements
• will carry out work to check that appropriate measures are in place to protect workers from COVID-19
• will resume targeted proactive inspection work of high-risk industries
• will continue with, and will build on, our re-prioritised regulatory approach to key critical areas and activities in major hazard offshore oil and gas and onshore chemical, explosives and microbiological industries using remote techniques in conjunction with site visits, including conducting visits offshore
• will continue to undertake regulatory activities which do not require site visits as normally as possible, for example Approvals and Authorisation work for biocides and pesticides, Statutory Permissioning activities such as Licensing, Safety Case / Report Assessments, Thorough Reviews, Combined Operations Notifications, Wells Notifications, Land Use Planning Applications, Hazardous Substances Consents etc
• continue to investigate work related deaths across all industry sectors, the most serious major injuries and dangerous occurrences and reported concerns, including those related to social distancing and COVID-19. In such cases we will continue to secure compliance with the law, and conduct our investigations using a mixture of technology, without compromising the collection of evidence and our ability to secure effective control of risk, and site visits.