BSIF warns on new safety regs amendment

In line with the proposals made last year by Lord Young (pictured) in his report 'Common Sense, Common Safety' the consultation set out the amendment to regulation 3(2). If this proposed amendment is adopted, the period of incapacitation after which an injury to a person at work must be reported to the enforcing authority, will change from over three to over seven days. Commenting on the proposed amendment, BSIF CEO David Lummis said: "Overall the BSIF is supportive of Lord Young's report and believes its common sense approach will in time help to overcome some of the problems currently in the marketplace. "The suggested amendment to RIDDOR would contribute to eliminating the burden of paperwork for small businesses. This in turn would help cost savings to be made and at a time when many small businesses need support to survive this is no bad thing. "However a number of reservations regarding this amendment still remain. This proposed revision would contribute to cost savings but this must not be to the detriment of damaging workers health. The increase in days would lead to a decrease in non-major reports, when in fact the reality will be many workers will return to work between four and seven days which under the amendments may not be monitored. This could compromise the quality of the data and in turn the superiority of the evaluation that the HSE produces year in, year out. Analysis of the results to help prevent future accidents may be compromised. "Additionally, we are aware that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been put under continued strain to cut its budgets. The combination of the affects of the decrease in HSE activity together with the change in RIDDOR statistics may create a false impression of the affects of the HSE budgets cuts and therefore their responsibility towards worker health and safety. "Also a new legal requirement will shortly be enforced for all European Union (EU) countries to provide data on Over 3 Day injuries to Eurostat (the EU statistical office). If this amendment was to go through it would mean that a more costly and complex method of evaluation would need to be implemented to comply with EU legislation."