New "Fee For Intervention" Cost Recovery Scheme

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Letter to Branches




No. 644/12
Ref EX5
Date: 28 August 2012

To: All Branches

Dear Colleagues,

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) - New "Fee For Intervention" Cost Recovery Scheme - Implementation Date 1st October 2012

LTB 273/12 published on 13 April 2012 gave a detailed report on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announcement of its new cost recovery scheme called "Fee for Intervention (FFI) and that further reports would be made in due course.

The new FFI scheme sets out to recover HSE's costs from those who break health and safety laws for the time and effort HSE spends helping to put matters right, such as investigating and taking enforcement action. FFI will only apply
to businesses that have the HSE as their enforcing authority. Law-abiding businesses that have good standards of health and safety management, will be free from costs and will not pay a fee. FFI does not apply to either self-employed
people who only put themselves at risk, or to employees.

The Government agreed that it is right that those who break the law should pay their fair share of the costs to put things right - and not the public purse and tax payer. The Government also gave notice that it intended to proceed with
the FFI scheme as recommended to ministers by HSE's Board in December 2011, following a public consultation that took place last Summer.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has confirmed that Fee for Intervention (FFI), will start on 1 October 2012, following Parliamentary approval. New, detailed guidance has been published by the HSE setting out how the scheme
will work in practice and a copy is attached for your information. It explains how FFI works and includes examples illustrating how it would be applied.

The published guidance explains how the scheme will work and what businesses can do to comply with the law and avoid incurring a fee.

HSE has completed a successful test run of the scheme in preparation for its start in October.

The Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012, will put a duty on HSE to recover its costs for carrying out its regulatory functions from those found to be in material breach of health and safety law. The HSE have defined “material breach”
as: “When in the opinion of the HSE inspector, there has been a contravention of health and safety law that is serious enough to require them to notify the person in material breach of that opinion in writing.”The proposed Fee for
Intervention hourly rate for 2012/13 is £124.

The HSE say that FFI will encourage businesses and organisations to comply in the first place or put matters right quickly when they don't. They also hope that it will also discourage those who undercut their competitors by not complying
with the law and putting people at risk. The new fees are in addition to the HSE’s existing enforcement powers which include the issuing of enforcement notices and bringing prosecutions.

A copy of the new guidance is attached.

Yours Sincerely


Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer