Chapter 3: Use of Notices

This chapter looks at the use of improvement and prohibition notices by FOD inspectors.

An Improvement Notice can be imposed when the inspector is of the view that there has been a contravention of a provision of health and safety law. The notice will state that particular changes must be made within a particular time period. A prohibition notice can be imposed when an inspector is of the view that there is or will be a risk of serious injury in circumstances that make it likely that the contravention will continue or be repeated.

Table 1 shows that the levels of improvement notices has increased by 73% - from 3721 to 6462. The number of prohibition notices has also increased – but only by 20%. It is interesting to note that whilst in 1996/7 the number of improvement and prohibition notices was almost identical, in 2000/01 over 2000 more improvement than prohibition notices were used. The number of Crown notices is small and shows no particular trend– although there was a quadrupling of crown improvement notices between 1996/7 to 1999/00 (6 to 24), which however reduced again the following year (to 12).

Table 1
Numbers of notices between 1996/7 and 2000/01

Table 2 looks at the number of notices used in different industries and how that differed over a five year period. It shows that the biggest percentage increases in the use of improvement notices over the period was in Construction (an increase of 359 notices - 192%) and the Energy/Extractive Sector (an increase of 112 notices - 487%) though both sectors started from particularly low levels of notices in 1996/7.

It is notable that in only the Energy/Extractive and Construction sectors was the number of prohibition notices imposed higher than the number of improvement notices – in fact, in 1996/7 the number of prohibition notices was almost ten times that of improvement notices (1807 compared to 187) and in 2000/01 it was four times (2084 compared to 546).

Table 2
Numbers of Notices by Industry, 1996/7 and 2000/01

Table 3 and 4 looks at the number of improvement and prohibition notices used in different HSE areas and how the levels changed over a five year period. In relation to improvement notices (Table 3), it shows that there was an increase in all HSE areas – though this ranged from 162% in North West (an increase of 159) to 4% in the West Midlands (an increase of just 10).

Table 3
Number of Improvement Notices, by HSE Area, 1996/7 and 2000/01

In relation to prohibition notices, there were four HSE areas where there was a decrease in the use of notices - Northern Home Counties (-1%), Greater London (-9%), North Midlands (-12%) and West Midlands (-26%). These decreases compared to an increase of 83% in the South West.

Table 4
Number of Prohibition Notices, by HSE Area, 1996/7 and 2000/01

Table 5 sets out the number of improvement and prohibition notices that have resulted from investigations into a reported incident. This indicates how most notices are imposed as a result of inspections rather than investigations.

Table 5
Number of Notices imposed as a result of an investigation, 1996/7 – 2000/01

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