Health and safety inspections and enforcement

We are responsible for enforcing health and safety at the following types of premises across the district:

offices (except government offices)
shops
hotels
restaurants and cafes
leisure premises
nurseries and playgroups
pubs and clubs
sheltered accommodation and care homes

We enforce the health and safety legislation at these premises in a number of ways:

Project based inspections

Every year we set a couple of projects based on the current health and safety priorities set by the health and safety executive and any local intelligence we have gathered. These projects involve us targeting specific topics or industries and carrying out focused inspections to check compliance. We have been able to provide businesses with information and guidance on how to achieve compliance and in some instances enforcement action has taken place.

Our recent projects have involved:

Gas Safety in catering premises
Carbon monoxide risks with solid fuel appliances
Legionella
Gravity Slicers
Event Safety
Petting Farms

Accident investigations

We are notified of reportable accidents that have occurred at premises within the district where we are responsible for enforcing health and safety legislation. We will investigate these accidents to find out the cause and help implement suitable corrective actions, we can also take any suitable enforcement action where required to get compliance.

Complaints

We also investigate a number of complaints about health and safety concerns. Complaints allow us to investigate and visit premises that we may not have focused on and are useful in providing us with intelligence about issues around the district.

If you wish to make a complaint about a workplace please click here to view our complaints pages.

Enforcement

We have a range of enforcement options available to us when enforcing health and safety legislation including

Advice and guidance
Written warnings
Improvement notices
Prohibition notices
Simple Cautions
Prosecution

For more information, please see our enforcement policy.

Reporting

Local Authorities (LAs) provide data annually to Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on their health and safety intervention, enforcement and prosecution activity. The data is captured on a form known as an ‘LAE1’ and is submitted by LAs to the HSE who publishes this data on their website. This allows LAs to benchmark and peer review their activity.

You can view the Local Authority LAE1 Annual Return Data for 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 published on the HSE website, here – including data from previous years. (external link)