As the UK’s national regulator and enforcement agency for health and safety in the workplace, the HSE has several options it can take to make sure organisations abide by health and safety law.
The most obvious is a full prosecution, in which the HSE takes an individual or an organisation to court if it believes there is sufficient evidence of a serious breach of health and safety legislation.
However, there are two other processes HSE can use to ensure that duty-holders fulfil their responsibilities.
The first is to serve an Improvement Notice.
Improvement Notices represent the most common form of HSE enforcement action. They are issued when an HSE inspector identifies a contravention of health and safety law that requires correction within a specified timeframe.
The Improvement Notice will state what the organisation needs to do to rectify the issue, and provide a reasonable deadline for compliance, typically ranging from a few weeks to several months, depending on the complexity of the necessary improvements.
The second, and more serious option for HSE inspectors, is to serve a Prohibition Notice.
These are used when there is an imminent risk of serious personal injury – such as in the aftermath of an accident – and, unlike Improvement Notices, Prohibition Notices take immediate effect.
Prohibition Notices are usually issued when an investigating HSE inspector has identified that the cause of the initial accident still poses an imminent danger and, by using a Prohibition Notice, the inspector has the authority to stop work immediately until the specified safety issue or issues are resolved.
You can view all Prohibition Notices and Improvement Notices on the public register here.
For those looking to better understand their legal duties and avoid enforcement action, details of our online health and safety courses are available here.
