Inspections and other contacts with Workplaces

This chapter analyses the number of ‘contacts’ that FOD inspectors have with registered premises. In particular, it looks at level of ‘inspections’ and how these compare with the levels of other forms of contacts – in particular ‘investigations’.

It is possible to compare the number of inspections, investigations and other forms of workplace contacts, as inspectors must enter details of every contact they have into the HSE Focus database. There are 14 different types of contacts (See Box)

Key Statistics

Analysis of total number of Contacts
Table 1 shows that the total number of recorded contacts with premises has decreased between 1996/7 and 2000/01 by 24,774 – a decrease of 13%. There is no data available on the number of registered premises prior to 2002, so it has not been possible to determine if any of this decline can be explained by a decrease in the number of registered premises.

Table 1
Total Number of contacts, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

Table 2 looks at the number of contacts in different HSE areas and indicates how the levels of contacts have changed in each area over a five-year period. Three areas have increased their contacts: South, South West, and Scotland East. In all other areas, the numbers of contacts have decreased across the period. The level of decline ranges from a decrease of just 0.7% in Greater London (with 91 fewer contacts) to a decrease of 36% in South Yorkshire (3,377 fewer contacts).

Table 2
Total Contacts by HSE Area, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

Table 3 examines the number of contacts in different industry groupings and how the levels of contact have changed over a five-year period. It shows that there have been decreases in all industrial sectors, with the greatest reduction of actual contacts being 15,476 in the Construction sector, compared to a reduction of only 831 in Manufacturing; the greatest percentage reduction was in Extractive industry sector, where there was a decline of 34%.

Table 3
Total Contacts by Industry, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

Analysis of Different Types of Contacts
Table 4 looks at the numbers of each of the different types of contact over a five-year period. It shows that there have been considerable increases in the numbers of contacts relating to investigation (44%), enforcement (46%), education (143%) and advice (33%), whilst at the same time a very large decrease in the number of inspections (41%).

TABLE 4
Numbers of Different ‘Types of Contact’, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

The four main contact types are ‘inspection’, ‘enforcement’, ‘investigation’ and ‘advice’, and Tables 5 and 6 address how these four particular types of contact have changed in different industries between 1996/7 and 2000/01. It is interesting to note that although in 1996/7 both the Construction and Manufacturing sectors have a similar number of inspections (around 35,000), by 2000/01 the number of inspections in Construction had decreased by over 50% (over 19,000 inspections) which was over twice the reduction in the number of inspection contacts in Manufacturing. One might expect that as a result there would be a corresponding difference in the number of investigation contacts, but in fact there has been more of an increase in the number of investigations in Manufacturing (43%) compared to Construction (35%).
Of further note is that whilst the number of ‘advice’ contacts has decreased in Construction by 16%, they have increased in Manufacturing by 59%.
It is also notable that whilst there has been a similar percentage increase in the number of ‘enforcement’ contacts in Construction, Manufacturing, Energy/Extractive and Service sectors of around 50%, there has been an increase of just 0.2% (an increase of 4 contacts) in Agriculture.

Table 5
Number of ‘Inspection’ and ‘advice’ contacts by Industry, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

Table 6
Number of ’Investigation’ and ‘Enforcement’ contacts by Industry, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

Table 7 and 8 indicate how four main contact types - ‘inspection’, ‘enforcement’, ‘investigation’ and ‘advice’ - have changed in different HSE areas between 1996/7 and 2000/01. It is notable that the reduction in inspection contacts varies widely from one area to another, so that whilst in South there was a reduction of 1,070 (18%) inspections (62.7%), in South Yorkshire there was a reduction of 3,335 (63%) inspections. In addition the South did have a higher increase in the number of ‘advice’ contacts than South Yorkshire.

The increase in the number of investigation contacts also varies from one HSE area to another so that whilst Scotland East has an increase in 84.9% (an extra 2,082), North and West Yorkshire only had an increase in 0.3% (8 extra contacts).

Table 7
Number of ‘Inspection’ and ‘Advice’ contacts by HSE Area, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

Table 8
Number of ’Investigation’ and ‘Enforcement’ contacts by HSE Area, (1996/7 – 2000/01)

The data from Tables 7 and 8 is collapsed and presented in summary form in Table 9. Here it becomes clear that inspections have declined quite dramatically across areas, whilst there have been general increases in the numbers of investigations and ‘advice’ contacts. However, there is no clear relationship between these changes. For example, while Marches has seen the greatest decline in numbers of inspections (-3942), the simultaneous increase in investigation and advice are relatively small. North and West Yorkshire and North East both saw similar declines in the numbers of inspections (2,333 and 2,330 respectively) – yet there are significant differences between their increases in numbers of investigations and advice. Perhaps by contrast, in Scotland East there has been the highest increases in both investigation and advice and the third largest decline in inspections.

Table 9
Changes in the levels of contacts over a five year period by HSE area

Ratios between numbers of registered premises and different types of Contact
The following Tables, 10 and 11, look at the year 2000/01 in further detail. They compare the number of contacts with the number of premises in each area and each industry. The information on the number of premises relates to the number of premises as of February 2002, and so does not relate exactly to the year 2000/01. It is, however, sufficiently accurate for the purposes of this brief analysis.

The Tables gives details of the number of total contacts/premises ratio in different industries and in different areas. Table 10 shows that whilst on average 1 in 3 Manufacturing premises has a contact with an inspector, in Agriculture this is about 1 in 10. Table 11 shows that the highest average level of contact was in Merseyside – with the lowest in Northern Home Counties

Table 10: Total Number of premises and contacts by industry (2000/01)

Table 11
Total Number of premises and contacts by HSE Area (2000/01)

Whilst Tables 10 and 11 were concerned with the total number of premises and contacts, Tables 12 and 13 are concerned with the number of premises which have at least one contact (this is because some premises have more than one contacts)

They show that, nationally, about one in nine registered premises has at least one contact with an FOD inspector each year. Table 12 shows that in Construction it is just over one in five whilst in Agriculture it is one in twelve. Table 13 shows that in Merseyside one in six registered premises had at least one contact, but in East Anglia it is one in ten.

It is worth emphasising that these statistics mean that in 2000/01, 90% of registered premises (including about a 100,000 construction sites) had no contact with a FOD inspector.

It is interesting to note that whilst the ratio of total contacts/premises for Construction and Manufacturing is about the same (Table 10), the number of premises in Manufacturing with at least one contact is significantly less than Construction. This shows that FOD inspectors made, on average, more contacts for each Manufacturing premises than for each Construction site.

Table 12
Number of different premises (by industry) with one inspector contact or more, (2000/01)

Table 13
Number of different premises (by HSE area) with one inspector contact or more, 2000/01

Tables 14 and 15 set out the total number of premises by industry and area, which have had at least one inspection. Nationally, one in 20 premises received at least one inspection during the course of the year, though this ranged from 1 in 10 in Construction to 1 in 36 in the Service sector, and between 1 in 13 in the North West to 1 in 33 in Northern Home Counties. Again, it needs to be emphasised that these are mostly very low levels of inspection.

Table 14
Numbers of different premises (by industry) with at least one inspection, (2000/01)

Table 15
Numbers of different premises (by HSE area) with at least one inspection, 2000/01

TYPES OF CONTACTS AND THEIR ABREVIATIONS

Back to the Top

Back to Index of Chapters

Back