Summary

This instruction applies to planned inspections of those dutyholders within the 'category A', potentially high-risk grouping (as defined below) outside Construction Division.  It describes (i) the selection process; (ii) the inspection approach; (iii) recording and monitoring progress and (iv) a revised performance measure for this group.

Purpose

FOD must continue to target carefully the companies with which we intervene and, where possible, must target those dutyholders that we regard as 'high risk'.   We use our professional judgement and the intelligence that we gather at interventions to assign an inspection rating to dutyholders (note that an 'inspection' rating may be assigned after any intervention, providing sufficient intelligence has been gathered).  It is right that we make use of that rating to prioritise our inspections.  Construction Division will increasingly use the inspection rating system, in particular to aid targeting.  Separate arrangements will be agreed for them on both aspects.  

Selecting 'category A' dutyholders

Category A dutyholders are those which, within the previous work-year, have been given ratings of 5 or 6 within the inspection rating scheme for any of the following criteria:

• overall safety performance;
• overall health performance;
• competence/attitude of management. 

In 2007/08, these rating scores indicated, for safety and health issues, that there was general non-compliance with the potential for one or more fatalities or cases of serious or irreversible ill health.  The management ratings indicated that:

• Rating 5: Management show significant shortcomings in their knowledge of relevant standards; they do not appear to be willing to instigate a proactive approach and have not recognised that health and safety is an issue where they need to be personally involved. There is uncertainty as to how they will respond to the findings from the inspection.
• Rating 6: There is a negative approach to accepting legal duties and management dispute the relevance or validity of recognised benchmark standards. Totally ineffective in the management of health and safety.  The findings from the inspection are likely to be ignored.

FOD NWHQ will provide divisions with lists of qualifying dutyholders shortly after the start of each work-year. These lists will include FMU/Provider Group identifiers, local authority codes and the values of the overall safety performance, overall health performance and competence/attitude in management ratings for the last rating given in the previous work-year.

Divisions should review the intelligence available on each dutyholder (primarily through COIN, but including any intelligence that is known but not recorded on COIN) in order to decide whether to accept the dutyholder as (i) properly within category A and (ii) suitable for renewed or continued intervention within that work-year.

This process is to ensure that, for example:

• the dutyholder continues to perform at the rated level - have interventions been made after the one that lead to the initial rating, but no re-rating given?
• it is appropriate to intervene with the dutyholder - is HSE, or another regulator, taking formal enforcement action such that an HSE intervention would be undesirable at this moment?
• there is no intervention with the dutyholder while they undergo a structured, timebound and agreed process aimed at improving their ability to manage health and safety.

If a division wishes to remove any dutyholder from the category A list supplied, they must inform FOD NWHQ Planning within one month of receiving the listing.  In each case, reasons must be given.  

Inspection approach

For those dutyholders remaining on the category A list, divisions should plan to address the issues of most importance.  They will use all relevant information to plan an intervention, including the Inspection Report Form scores, the issues recorded in the record of the visit or in any written confirmation of action needed (especially matters of evident concern or matters of potential serious concern), or the subject of any enforcement notice issued. 

Once on the premises, or in contact with senior management, that plan may be changed to reflect other hazards and risks present (eg matters of evident concern), using the inspector's professional judgement.  The key aim will be to properly assess the dutyholder's current performance in managing health and safety.  In all cases, formal enforcement action should be taken in line with the Enforcement Policy Statement and arrangements made under it, in the usual way. 

Recording, reporting and monitoring interventions

A record of all interventions with category A dutyholders should be made in accordance with current COIN instructions.  Where sufficient intelligence has been gathered (which should be in every case), the dutyholder should be re-rated in accordance with current advice.  Where this results in a rating representing better performance than a score of 5 or 6, the record should include an explanation.  If the rating remains high, the reason for this should also be made clear, along with the further action proposed.

In a few cases the ratings for both overall health and safety performance may show a satisfactory or exemplary standard of compliance but the competence and attitude of management rating may be low (ie with a high rating). In this situation undue resource should not be applied to improving the competence and attitude of management at the workplace and the facts should be noted in the contact record.

Divisions should institute such local tracking and assurance/data quality mechanisms as they consider necessary to ensure that adequate reports can be provided to FOD NWHQ (see below).  The precise means by which this is done is for divisions to decide, but they may wish, for example, to create a master case against which all such interventions should be recorded and keep separate records where dutyholders are found to be out of business or otherwise closed. 

The current FOD performance measure for this work (which is reported to the HSE Board and Ministers) is that all dutyholders accepted by each division as being subject to category A action will receive an intervention within that work-year.  Thus, FOD NWHQ Planning will call for a half- and end-year report of progress with the dutyholders notified to each division.  Divisions will need to check their local records referred to above in order to make their returns.