Plans to exempt thousands of businesses from health and safety inspections have been announced by ministers. The ‘Red tape blitz’ will see over 3,000 regulations scrapped or overhauled.
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To commence in April 2013, the new rules will mean that checks will no longer be routinely carried out on premises considered to be low risk, such as shops. However inspections will still apply to areas deemed to be of high risk, such as construction sites and food production, or if they have had an accident or a track record of poor performance.
Ministers say the checks can place an unnecessary burden on some businesses, but some trade unions say it risks the safety of employees and customers.
The government says it will scrap or change more than 3,000 regulations and that its drive to cut bureaucracy will save companies millions of pounds.
Under plans announced by Business Minister Michael Fallon, shops, offices, pubs and clubs will no longer face health and safety inspections.
Business Minister Michael Fallon said:
“Cutting red tape shows the Government is serious about helping businesses to flourish. We’re getting out of the way by bringing common sense back to health and safety.
“And we will be holding departments’ feet to the fire to ensure all unnecessary red tape is cut, and we can boost the jobs and growth that our economy needs.”
Business Secretary Vince Cable said:
“We are delivering a number of reforms across the economy to deliver on our top priority – strong and sustainable growth.
“Removing unnecessary red tape and putting common sense back into areas like health and safety will reduce fears and costs for businesses. We want to help give British business the confidence it needs to create more jobs and support the wider economy to grow.”
The Government is also taking radical action on red tape in a further measure to boost growth and jobs in the economy. It is systematically examining some 6,500 substantive regulations that it inherited through the Red Tape Challenge process.
The Government is now committing to abolish or substantially reduce at least 3,000 of these regulations and it will complete the identification of the regulations to be scrapped or overhauled by December 2013.
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