Health and safety inspections

Environmental Health officers' aim is to protect the health and safety and welfare of employees and to safeguard others, principally the public, who may be exposed to risks from work activities within your business. This is primarily carried out through routine inspection of the workplace. Eleven officers are responsible for enforcement of health and safety within 3,830 premises in Salford, with a team of eleven officers across the city.

Purpose of health and safety inspections: The primary responsibility for controlling health and safety within the workplace rests with the employer of the business, however, environmental health officers inspect various workplaces to check compliance with health and safety legislation.

Planning inspections: The local authority must keep a record of all businesses that fall within their enforcement regime and put together a programme to make sure that they are inspected on a regular basis.The work of the Health and Safety enforcement service is coordinated with the other ten Greater Manchester authorities (AGMA) and detailed in the group's service plan which can be downloaded below. This year key areas include violence at work and sunbed safety initiatives.

Frequency of inspections: The frequency of the inspection depends upon a number of factors that look at the risk to consumers. These include:

Safety performance: A numerical rating from one (excellent) to six (unacceptable) to indicate the inspector's judgment of the overall level of compliance of safety risks at the workplace. This must be based on a whole-scale review of all the findings from an inspection or other significant intervention. (the potential of a machine, activity or methods of work, etc, to cause harm)
Health performance: A numerical rating from one (excellent) to six (unacceptable), to indicate the inspector's judgment of the overall level of compliance regarding health risks at the workplace in question. This is based on a whole-scale review of all the findings from an inspection or other significant intervention. This relates to both employees and those affected, or potentially affected, by work activities e.g. members of the public
Welfare provision: A numerical rating, from one (compliant) to four (major non-compliance), to indicate the inspector's judgment of the overall level of compliance regarding welfare standards at the workplace in question based on a review of all the findings from an inspection or other significant intervention
Confidence in management: A numerical rating,from one (best practice) to six(avoiding responsibilities), to indicate an inspector's level of confidence in management's ability to maintain or attain a low level of health and safety risk, at the workplace or in relation to work activities, in the foreseeable future. This relates to both employees and those affected, or potentially affected, by work activities e.g. members of the public

The inspection rating system:

Enables officers to identify the contributions made by the various risk factors to the overall assessment of the workplace and prioritise business for an inspection or intervention
Categorises premises into group A (the highest hazard/risk group), through B1-B2 (medium risk), to C (the lowest hazard/risk)

Once the category has been determined, following the routine inspection, premises are visited as set out below:

Category	Rating score	Minimum frequency of inspection
A	Score of five or six in any risk	At least every year
B1	Score of four in any risk	At least every 18 months
B2	Scores of three in any risk	An intervention at least every three years
C	No score greater than two	Use other non inspection intervention every five years

Business can move between the categories, particularly if conditions improve or deteriorate.

Performance - how are we doing? The performance of the service in meeting this has improved steadily over the past few years as shown in the tables below:

Health and safety

Pro-active health and safety inspections are carried out over a ten year programme, in accordance with the HSE's Priority Planning Scheme and the HSC Section 18 guidance that requires:

“...each local authority to make adequate arrangements for the enforcement within their area of the relevant statutory provisions...”

The HELA lays down the frequency of inspection for all enforced health and safety premises, dependent on a risk rating system - the highest risk premises being inspected every year and the lowest risk premises contacted at least every ten years. These frequencies are the ones to which we aim to adhere at Salford (B and C premises are not included). The performance of the service in meeting this has improved steadily over the past few years as shown in the table below:

Performance Against Local PI

Risk	High risk premises (Bands A and B1)	Medium risk premises (Bands B2 to B4)
2001-2002	85%	61%
2002-2003	89%	49%
2003-2004	68%	38%
2004-2005	99%	45%
2005-2006	100%	53%
2006-2007	86%	37%
2007-2008	100%	73%
2008-2009	79%	47%
2009-2010	100%	46%
2010-2011	77%	41%

Aim: - to improve the standards of health and safety within the service’s enforced work premises in the city of Salford.

How resources are targeted

The role of the service is to enforce health and safety legislation across the city of Salford within approximately 4000 health and safety premises. This is undertaken by using all the four approaches of the “enforcement mix”:

Demand: through our response to complaints/requests from both businesses and customers
Inspection: by undertaking approximately 1,000 inspections in accordance with a risk-based approach
Education: through information and guidance to businesses via the website or targeted initatives
Intelligence: through our liaison with other authorities and response to requests from the HSE and HSC

The outcome measure

Our performance in this field will be tracked by improvements in the overall risk profile of the Health and Safety enforced workplaces within Salford at 1 April:

Year	A	B1	B2	B3	B4	C	Number inspected	Number of premises
April 1999	140	433	748	820	825	772	1,564	3,738
April 2000	117	443	753	832	826	767	1,469	3,738
April 2001	93	417	771	862	836	759	932	3,738
April 2002	76	366	808	890	849	749	1,204	3,738
April 2003	63	288	817	943	876	751	1,046	3,738
April 2004	49	267	820	970	907	760	799	3,738
April 2005	27	168	780	970	890	774	1,234	3,609
April 2006	26	123	701	1,035	941	818	1,058	3,644
April 2007	34	104	562	1,071	1,020	852	974	3,643
April 2008	24	90	486	1,039	1,011	1,403	1,198	4,053
April 2009	22	100	475	1,098	1,090	1,293	980	4,078
April 2010	5	337	2,532	N/A	N/A	401	1,050	3,830
April 2011	32	269	2,501	N/A	N/A	600	840	3,851 (including 449 unrated)

Revised risk rating scheme implemented 1 April 2010 based on four risk factors.

In addition the work of the service in contributing to the HSE Strategy for health and safety will be tracked by recording the number of our interventions in five key areas, namely: