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Enforcement
Action
When
breaches of health and safety law are identified,
Local Authority inspectors can either provide oral
or written advice, impose Enforcement notices or prosecute.
Unlike the HSE, Local Authorities also have a category
of enforcement called ‘informal notices’
which are mostly letters asking for compliance.
They can also prosecute. This section of the report
looks at the formal and informal notices imposed by
local authorities.
Overall Picture
According to HSE’s extrapolated data, in 1999/2000
Local Authorities imposed 6100 enforcement notices
(improvement/prohibition notices) – a fall of
6% from the previous year. The number of improvement
notices was around 75% of the total number imposed
five years earlier (1995/6); whilst the number of
prohibition notices – a quarter of all the notices
imposed – had fluctuated over the years.
Local Authorities had also imposed 121,620 ‘informal
notices’ asking for compliance which was an increase
of 2,530 since the previous year.
Local Authorities prosecuted 412 alleged breaches
of health and safety law and obtained a conviction
in 78% of these.
Formal Notices
We were able to look at 355 Local Authorities We found
that 10 local authorities imposed on average more
than 1 'formal' notice - either an improvement or
prohibition notice - for each ten visits undertaken.
However there were 56 local authorities which did
not impose any notice.
There is clearly a huge gap between Solihull MBC,
for example, which imposed 65 notices in relation
to 422 visits (an average of 1 notice for 7 visits)
compared to Kennet District Council which imposed
two notices following 1515 visits.
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To
download the table that ranks the 355 local authorities
in relation to the ratio of formal notics inspectors
imposed to the number of premises visited, click
here |
Informal
Notices
The number of informal notices imposed is much higher
than the number of formal notices. In East Lothiam
for example on average every visit resulted in two
informal notices
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To
download the table that ranks the 355 local authorities
in relation to the ratio of informal notics inspectors
imposed to the number of premises visited, click
here |
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