Has your company in the Peterborough or Cambridge area been served with an Improvement or Prohibition Enforcement Notice?
The notices are served by Health & Safety Inspectors or Local Authority Inspectors. If the inspector believes that your work activities could give rise to a risk of serious personal injury or, that an injury to an employee has already occurred a prohibition notice will be served. Improvement notices are served for material breach of a regulation?
The HSE will be able to charge £133.00 per hour for any Improvement or Prohibition Notice as from April 2012.
Being issued with an Improvement Notice will require that you put control measures in place to comply with specific regulations, eg, separating moving vehicles and people, failure to address the notice may result in a fine (maximum of £20,000).
A Prohibition Enforcement Notice will require you to stop work immediately until you have taken action to remove and safely control the risk. Not doing so may well result in personal prosecution and in some cases owners/directors could face imprisonment.
The Improvement or Prohibition enforcement notice will also state:
- Which specific regulation is being breached;
- What control measures you need to put in place to reduce or control that risk.
All Enforcement Notices – Improvement and Prohibition – are published by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) on their online public register of enforcement notices, where it will appear for five years.
Notices are not published until nine weeks after their date of issue to allow you to appeal.
The business owner has to prove, to the respective Inspector, that specific remedial actions have been taken for either of the notices to be signed off as complete.
You do have the right to appeal against any of the enforcement notices within 21 days of issue date.
If you appeal against an improvement notice, the notice will be suspended until your appeal is heard.
If you appeal against a prohibition notice, the notice stays in force until after your appeal.
The Government has improved the appeals procedure and, as from April 2012, business owners will not need to go through the tribunal system but to an elected appeals panel.
Sphere RHSM, through its Peterborough and Cambridge Offices, have in-depth experience and knowledge of helping companies with qualified advice, which guides you through the legalities and specifics of the actions that you will need to take.
