Facilities Management Association

Sara Bean of Workplace Law reports.

 

Budget 2011: What it means for employers

 

In the 2011 Budget, Chancellor George Osborne said his policy objective was “to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries”, and that he wants to make the UK “the best place in Europe to start, ?nance and grow a business”.

 

Osborne announced that proposals for speci?c regulations that would have cost business over £350m a year to implement will be dropped.  For example, the right to request time to train will not be extended to businesses with fewer than 250 employees, and the dual discrimination rules won’t be brought forward.

He said there will be a moratorium exempting micro-businesses and start-ups from new domestic regulation for three years from 1 April 2011 and that a “public thematic review to reduce the stock of regulation” will be launched.

 

Osborne also confirmed that 21 enterprise zones will be launched and there will be a consultation on the long-term plan to merge income tax and National Insurance.

In the same week as the Budget, Work and Pensions Minister, Chris Grayling MP, announced a package of changes to Britain’s health and safety system, including a huge cut in health and safety inspections.

The Minister said the changes are designed to support the Government’s growth agenda and to ease the regulatory burdens on business. It follows the review of health and safety, Common Sense, Common Safety, published by Lord Young last year.

Said Grayling:

"The purpose of health and safety regulation is to protect people at work and rightly so. But we need common sense at the heart of the system, and these measures will help root out the needless burden of bureaucracy.

"This will help us make Britain a more growth focused, entrepreneurial nation.  By reducing unnecessary red tape we can encourage businesses to come and invest in the UK, creating jobs and opportunities when we need them most.”

Under the plans, employers will no longer face automatic health and safety inspections. Instead, health and safety inspectors will be instructed to concentrate their efforts on high risk locations, like major energy facilities, and on rogue employers who are putting the safety of their staff and the public at risk. This measure will cut the number of inspections carried out in the UK by at least a third. Rogue employers who endanger public and employee safety will also have to pay for the costs of the investigation into their activities.

The new register of qualified health and safety consultants is now available to businesses, and those who are untrained or give false advice will be excluded from the approved list.

Sweeping reforms to cut red tape regulation announced

 

Small Business Minister, Mark Prisk, has outlined a range of measures aimed at cutting down on business regulation, as promised by the Coalition Government last year.

 

In a speech to the Federation of Small Businesses in Liverpool, Mark Prisk revealed Business Secretary, Vince Cable’s, plans for a range of measures to be included in the Growth Review, including:

 

 

For the public audit, the legislation will be grouped into themes on a dedicated website, and businesses will be asked to tell the Government what they think of those regulations and how to improve the system.

 

The intention will be that any overly burdensome or unnecessary regulations are removed unless Departments can prove there is a good reason for them.

 

Site manager sentenced after worker exposed to asbestos

 

A construction site manager from Barry has been sentenced after directing a bricklayer to demolish a wall that contained asbestos. On 22 May 2009, Henry Bohlen, 63 was in Newport, supervising the refurbishment of the Monwel Hankinson facility, which manufactures equipment for people with disabilities.

 

A full site survey for asbestos had been carried out, but Mr Bohlen failed to check the warnings it gave and instructed Justin Jones, a bricklayer from Pontypridd, to manually demolish the known asbestos-containing fascia boards from the building.

 

Mr Jones used a hammer and chisel to break up the board into fragments, which generated plumes of dust, releasing asbestos fibres into the air. Mr Jones continued working as he had been asked to until another manager realised the danger and told him to stop. Mr Jones had to undergo emergency decontamination as a result.

 

Architects employed by Newport City Council, which partly runs the Monwel Hankinson facility, had specifically designed the refurbishment work to avoid disturbing any of the asbestos-containing materials. As site manager, Mr Bohlen was aware of this element of the refurbishment plan.

 

HSE Inspector, Liam Osborne, said:

 

"Henry Bohlen was a very experienced construction site manager and, by his own admission was aware of asbestos, the risks to health and the correct procedures that ought to have been followed.

 

"Rather than wait for the architect's plans, consult the site survey, or if that was not available, to have taken a few minutes to check with other parties, Mr Bohlen went ahead and instructed Mr Jones to do the work, which ultimately exposed him to the potentially deadly asbestos.”

 

Further information

 

The 12th Workplace Law Annual conference is being held on 5-6 April. Click here for more details.