Defra announces deregulation plans

The UK government has published its timetable for reforming environmental legislation following the recommendations of the red tape challenge

Defra has outlined its plans to remove, condense and simplify environmental regulation over the next four years, pledging to prioritise changes that  will make “meaningful improvements for business” and reduce the “administrative burden” of compliance.

In its implementation plan, the environment department confirms that the Landfill Allowance Scheme will be scrapped next year alongside regulations requiring construction sites to complete waste management plans, despite critical reactions in March when Defra originally announced the move. Defra’s plans state: “Industry consensus is that business would generate the requirements of the [Site Waste Management Plans] Regulations regardless of their existence but that getting rid of them would save businesses the associated administrative burden.”

CRS’s Head Of Environment, comments ‘ Environmental Legislation needs a clearer structure similar to health and safety, the sector specific approach at the moment is not fit for purpose and encourages organisations not to start to develop a legal register’

The environment department will consult on removing the regulations in December, with the final decision expected to by October 2013.

According to the implementation plan, consultations will be launched in January 2013 into how to improve the producer responsibility regimes for packaging and batteries – with Defra particularly looking at exempting more small businesses from the batteries regulations. Reviews of the regimes are to be finished by January 2014.

New guidance on cost sharing under the REACH legislation will be published before the end of the year, according to the plan, and by April 2014 Defra aims to have simplified the enforcement of the REACH rules by merging the REACH Enforcement Regulations 2008 with the Persistent Organic Pollutants Regulations 2007 and the Mercury Export and Data (Enforcement) Regulations 2010.

By April 2013, the department plans to have created a more streamlined environmental permitting regime, enabling all firms to decide the sequencing of planning and permitting applications. Meanwhile, the Environment Agency will publish guidance on how to apply for environmental permits and planning permission simultaneously by November 2012.

A new online legislation library, called Defra-lex, will also go live next April, and will provide organisations and environment professionals with a “one-stop-shop” for all publications related to Defra-legislation including guidance and consultation documents.

Defra’s implantation plan also covers work to be undertaken over the next four years by the Environment Agency and Natural England to improve the way in which legislation is enforced. The agency, for example, will be looking at how to enable businesses to upload information about hazardous waste electronically in a bid to cut paperwork and, by April 2014, it has pledged to simplify its guidance and shorten documents by 25%.

The agency also aims to publish plans by next summer on how it will tailor its regulatory approach to the 14 main business sectors it works across, and by November 2013 it will have also trialled its EMS+ scheme – where third-parties complete compliance checks.

The plan also confirms that a progress report on improving the implementation of the Habitats Directive is due to be published next spring, and that by the end of 2014 Defra will have reviewed and streamlined air quality legislation, particularly to ensure local authorities duties are aligned with EU targets.

£40k penalty for illegally burning waste

A skip hire company that claimed a fire on its site had been started by a ‘stray firework’, has been ordered to pay £40,000 after aerial photography proved it regularly burned waste

Lincolnshire firm Forceshift and its owner, Ronnie Bennet, pleaded guilty to breaching the company’s environmental permit by burning waste, despite being warned by the Environment Agency that it was illegal to do so.

In November 2010, a large fire covering 600 square metres broke out at Forceshift’s waste transfer site in Westville. While the firm maintained the fire had been started accidently by a firework, it agreed to a new site waste management plan stating that “no material [would] be burnt” and that any fire at the site would be an emergency situation.

However, in 2011 agency inspectors saw flames and plumes of smoke several metres high at the site, and aerial photography taken on four separate occasions confirmed that fires were being lit and that waste, including wood, metal and plastic, was being put on the fires.

Boston Magistrates’ Court heard that the agency found evidence of a further 12 fires at the site between November 2010 and October 2011. Ruby Hamid, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, told magistrates that the firm had burnt the waste to save money.

“The burning was deliberate or reckless and [Bennet] and his company were told not to burn but the burning continued,” she told magistrates.

Environment Agency senior manager Norman Robinson said: “Tonnes of waste were burned illegally for months without concern, releasing pollution to air and a smoke plume visible for miles.”

Forceshift and Bennet were fined a total of £26,000 for breaching permitting regulations and Environmental Protection Act 1990, and ordered to pay another £14,000 in costs.

26 killed in Petroleos gas pipeline fire Mexico

A big fire erupted at a natural gas pipeline distribution center near Mexico's border with the United States on Tuesday, killing 26 maintenance workers and forcing evacuations of people in nearby ranches and homes.

Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (‘Pemex’), initially reported 10 deaths at the facility near the city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas. Later, the death toll was raised to 26, including a man who was run over when he rushed onto a highway running away from the facility.

Pemex said at a news conference Tuesday night that the fire was extinguished in 90 minutes and the pipeline was shut off. The pipeline carries natural gas from wells in the Burgos basin. The company's director-general, Juan Jose Suarez, said four of those killed were Pemex employees and the rest were employed by contractors. He told reporters in Reynosa that 46 other workers were injured, including two hospitalized in serious condition. Suarez said they haven't found any evidence showing it was an attack.

Company executives said there was a gas leak, followed by an explosion, but the precise cause had not been determined. "Why there was such leak is something that must be investigated," said Carlos Morales Gil, Pemex's director of exploration and production.

Civil protection officials evacuated ranches and homes within three miles of the gas facility, which is about 1 2 miles southwest of Reynosa. Authorities didn't say how many people were evacuated, but the area
is sparsely populated, Tamaulipas state's civil protection director Pedro Benavides told a Televisa station. The highway that connects Reynosa to the industrial city of Monterrey was closed to traffic, authorities said.  Egidio Torre Cantu, governor of the state of Tamaulipas, sent condolences to the victims' relatives and vowed to make sure those injured receive help for their recovery.

Pipelines carrying gasoline and diesel in Mexico are frequently tapped by thieves looking to steal fuel. Several oil spills and explosions have been blamed on illegal taps. But thieves seldom target gas pipelines. In December 2010, authorities blamed oil thieves for an oil pipeline explosion in a central Mexico City near the capital that killed 28 people, including 13 children. That blast burned people and scorched homes, affecting 5,000 residents in an area six miles wide in San Martin Texmelucan.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57515578/26-dead-in-mexican-gas-pipeline-fire-near-u.s/

Lord Jordan's response to the Queen's Speech

“My Lords, in the present circumstances, for a Government to be business-friendly is a necessary objective. However, such a goal is not just about regulatory simplification and limiting inspections. It must also be about ensuring that companies can get access to the right sort of help and advice that they need to survive and prosper.

I want to reflect for a moment on the help that small businesses need so that they can avoid costly accidents and losses due to work-related ill health. A start has been made with the registration of health and safety consultants but much more is needed, particularly in helping to co-ordinate the contributions of all the bodies, including the private and voluntary sectors, that can help firms to understand their risks and implement appropriate preventive measures. The Health and Safety Executive, which has had to cut back its telephone information line as part of its budget reduction, would be ideally placed to draw together safety groups, trade associations and unions into this kind of national safety effort.
The whole question of health and safety is vital. It is not a burden on business, as some Ministers are wont to regard it, but a vital protection for both people and businesses alike. Its importance links directly to other key themes in the Queen's Speech: support for hard-working families and bearing down on crime. We owe a duty to support all members of the workforce to ensure that they return home to their families safe and sound at the end of each working day. We must also bear down on the relatively few unscrupulous employers whose failure to obey the law that protects their employees' lives and limbs is indeed a crime.
We welcome the reassurances from the DWP Minister, Chris Grayling, that nothing will be done to reduce protection for workers in risky industries, but he undermined that commitment by continuing to suggest that health and safety laws and regulations have been interfering with investment and jobs. This is contradicted by Professor Ragnar Lofstedt, who in his very competent review of health and safety law for the Government said clearly that there is no evidence of that. He said that the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and its subsidiary regulations, whose requirements are qualified by reasonable practicability, were broadly fit for purpose. In the end, he managed to identify only fourteen outdated or redundant pieces of health and safety law that could be got rid of, mainly because the matters they covered were dealt with by existing statutes. It is therefore quite misleading to suggest, as the Minister did recently at a business forum, that by getting rid of such gems as the Celluloid and Cinematograph Film Act 1922, the Gasholders (Record of Examinations) Order 1938 or the Gasholders and Steam Boilers (Metrication) Regulations 1981 the Government are somehow relieving industry of a colossal amount of red tape. In all these cases, because of Section 1(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, the same, if not more stringent, requirements remain in place.
Indeed, what evidence is there that any of the measures being repealed ever interfered with investment and job creation? There is none at all. Of course we must speak out against those petty bureaucrats who overinterpret every requirement, but it is time to stop demonising all health and safety. Good health and safety is very good for business. Yes, we must continue
to improve our statutes, but it is quite wrong to suggest that complying with the present legislation is damaging employers' profits.
If we want to talk about the real cost of health and safety to business, let us talk about the cost to business and the nation of not having it. In 2010-11, in addition to fatalities due to work-related accidents, of which there were 171 in Britain, and not including an estimated 600 deaths due to work-related road accidents, many thousands of people died before their time due to past exposure to hazardous agents such as asbestos and other cancer-causing substances. Twenty-two million days were lost due to work-related ill health and 4.5 million days were lost because of workplace injury. The annual cost to society of workplace injuries and ill health, excluding cancer, was estimated by the Health and Safety Executive at £14 billion in 2009-10. The cost of workplace accidents is enormous, with each fatal accident costing our society about £1.5 million and each reportable injury costing £17,400. Over the years, many thousands of individuals and their families have had their lives shattered by workplace accidents and ill health. That is why the case for maintaining sensible measures to control risks to health and safety is so important, and why quite frankly it belittles Ministers who stoop to talk of health and safety having gone mad.”

Lord Jordan

15 May 2012 : Column 293 et seq

Further changes to RIDDOR

Following the change in April 2012 to the reporting threshold for work related injuries from 3 to 7 days absence, HSE has now published its consultative document (which is available at http://www.hse.gov.uk/consult/condocs/cd243.htm and http://consultations.hse.gov.uk/gf2.ti/f/16770/442853.1/PDF/-/CD243.pdf) to rationalise RIDDOR in the light of the Lofstedt review.
In summary, HSE wants to focus on reporting of events which might attract an enforcement response.  It proposes that in future reporting should be limited to:

• all deaths to both workers and people not at work;
• all major injuries (based on a simplified list) to people at work;
• over-seven day injuries to people at work;
• only those dangerous occurrences that occur within major hazard industry sectors or within other specified higher risk sectors or activities such as construction; and
• domestic gas events (simplified criteria to apply).

HSE also suggest that in future, employers and persons in control of work premises only should have to record:

• all reportable incidents (other than gas events); and
• over-three day injuries to people at work.

HSE proposes that the following reporting requirements should be removed:

• cases of occupational disease, other than those resulting from a work-related exposure to a biological agent;
• non-fatal accidents to people not at work;
• dangerous occurrences outside of higher risk sectors or activities; and
• the reporting by self-employed persons of injuries or illness to themselves.

HSE says that no fundamental changes are proposed to the administrative arrangements for reporting incidents, and that the majority of reports will continue to be made using online report forms which are submitted directly to a central database.

CRS is concerned that the commitment in the Löfstedt Review to further review the RIDDOR Regulations should not be used to trigger a root and branch consideration of fundamental objectives in relation to the needs of all health and safety stakeholders for reliable and accurate data about accidents, incidents and ill health.
CRS has argued for some time that the reporting of notifiable dangerous occurrences (DOs) needs revision, particularly the need to learn from serious events in which people had not been harmed (sometimes called ‘near misses’). We see the current list as historic and largely out-of-date, and there is no link in RIDDOR guidance to the employer’s duty in their own risk assessments to identify significant DOs which should be reported and recorded internally.
We also note that, perversely, following Lord Young’s review, the decision to reduce the absence threshold for injury reporting by employers from over three days (OTD) to over seven days (rendering RIDDOR data in organisations even less statistically significant) had led many third parties such as clients and award bodies to start to ask for a new KPI of total lost time injury based on time lost beyond end of day or shift. Thus, besides having to still record internal OTD accidents more record keeping was now being required by ‘the market’.
CRS feels that a comprehensive re-think is needed which looks at all stakeholders’ needs and which also considers how to address the problem of reporting and recording work related ill health. There is a need to get this right and not to rush the exercise, particularly since two sets of changes to RIDDOR in such a short time would not make employers’ lives simpler.
On a first reading, while we support the aim of making RIDDOR clearer, we are concerned at the proposal to strip out reporting/recording of ill conditions, accidents affecting non-employees (members of the public), many of the dangerous occurrences and nearly all notifiable ill-health conditions.  More discussion is needed on these issues and more attention should be paid perhaps to the data which employers need to gather and record internally to enable them to review health and safety performance and refine their risk assessments.
HSE’s closing date for receipt of comments is 28 October 2012.

Which Route to Grad IOSH?

In a recent survey carried out by RoSPA “Which route to Grad IOSH status would you recommend?”
50% of their members said – NVQ Level 5.
CRS would like to invite  you to our NVQ Level 5 Diploma Launch – Silverstone 3^rd October 2012
The Level 5 Diploma is the next step in career development for anyone who has already taken the NEBOSH National General Certificate, or NEBOSH Fire Safety & Risk Management Certificate, or NEBOSH Environmental Course or the NEBOSH Construction Course.
NVQ Level 5 Diploma is the best route to Chartered Membership of IOSH (CMIOSH) for experienced Health & Safety Managers /Officers/Advisors. It is work based and practical, and relies on evidence from your job.
Come and find out more at our ½ day seminar presented by Jackie Holder –Wooloff  CMIOSH – A CRS specialist NVQ Assessor & mentor.
We will also be making our award presentation to our NVQ Candidate of 2012 – Dave Johnston, a short factory tour of Sahara Force India Formula One HQ (behind the scenes) and a buffet lunch will conclude the seminars events.
The event is free to attend but by invitation only, places are limited.
If you would like to accept our invitation and have your name on our guest list please contact Ros Stacey  rs@crsrisk.com or 01283 509175, and a full agenda will be sent to you.