10 Years in workplace fatalities

What’s been happening to Health and Safety performance since corporate manslaughter legislation was first proposed?

Legislation owed and enforced by HSE and Local Authorities

The HSE owns a significant amount of primary and secondary legislation. The primary legislation comprises the Acts of Parliament, including the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974. The secondary legislation is made up of Statutory Instruments (SIs), often referred to as “regulations”. It is enforced by the HSE and Local Authorities (LAs). The HSE and Las work locally, regionally and nationally, to common objectives and standards.

There appears to be no clear correlation between the number of deaths in the workplace year on year and key developments in progression of corporate manslaughter legislation. Renewed interest in the Bill did arise in 2000, however, following cases the previous year that attracted the biggest fines yet.

The number of deaths was at its highest in 2000, the year following the introduction of the management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. In the same year, a consultation was published to tighten up laws on corporate manslaughter.

Over the last 10 years, the number of recorded workplace deaths has fallen slightly from 287 in 1996, to 241 in 2006. In the same period, the workforce has grown by 2,900,000.

Below will map the number of workplace deaths against the size of the workforce, the amount of legislation in force, and company spend on health and safety.

1996
New legislation Introduced 9
Number of deaths 287
Size of workforce 26,060,000

1997
New legislation Introduced 3
Number of deaths 274
Size of workforce 26,525,000

1998
New legislation Introduced 5
Number of deaths 253
Size of workforce 26,795,000

1999
New legislation Introduced 7
Number of deaths 220
Size of workforce 27,158,000

2000
New legislation Introduced 2
Number of deaths 292
Size of workforce 27,473,000

2001
New legislation Introduced 4
Number of deaths 251
Size of workforce 27,701,000

2002
New legislation Introduced 11
Number of deaths 227
Size of workforce 27,917,000

2003
New legislation Introduced 4
Number of deaths 236
Size of workforce 28,184,000

2004
New legislation Introduced 1
Number of deaths 223
Size of workforce 28,465,000

2005
New legislation Introduced 14
Number of deaths 217
Size of workforce 28,730,000

2006
New legislation Introduced 3
Number of deaths 241
Size of workforce 28,960,000

Average Health and safety spend per employee by size of organisation

When calculated per employee, the most noticeable finding when looking at costs of compliance by size of organisation is the relatively small amount spent per employee for large and very large organisations when compared with small and medium sized organisations. The spend is very similar across large and very large organisations. For organisations with less than 250 employees the spend is also broadly similar.

There are however, some variations in relation to specific regulations. For example, SMEs spent considerably more per employee than larger organisations on the Noise at Work Regulations, Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, and on the Manual Handling Regulations.

 
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