Foreman accuses HSE of jeopardising on-site safety

An inspection foreman has accused the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) of ignoring serious safety problems after it refused to visit his workplace and took 'telephone action' instead.

The source told CJ that the HSE ignored his plea for a personal visit after he raised serious concerns over health and safety standards at the structural steel firm where he had worked. He had resigned days earlier in protest.

His claim comes amid mounting speculation there are not enough HSE inspectors in construction, which is placing more workers in danger.

He said: "When I first started in fabrication, going back 20 years, there was a great deal of inspection. Nowadays you don't see them unless it's at a big corporate company."

After he left, he called the HSE to list a string of problems that his former employer had been unwilling to correct. They included: no test certificates for overhead cranes no chain certificates no-one qualified to use the cranes and no pedestrian walkways identified.

The source's claims about a lack of inspectors were backed by freelance safety adviser John Henry, who said although he supported the work of the HSE, he did not believe its budget for inspectors was big enough.

"I look after between five and nine sites and I used to see probably one inspector every two or three months. But I haven't spoken on site to anyone from the HSE for nearly three years now," he said.

Mike McDonald, negotiator for the Prospect union which represents HSE inspectors, said: "There is a dire shortage of construction inspectors particularly in London and the South East. There has been some marginal increase in the past three years, but that hasn't really reversed the impact of reducing inspector numbers since 2000."

An HSE spokeswoman said it could not comment on specific cases without more detail. "A decision on how a complaint is investigated is based on the circumstances and the information provided. To make best use of resources, in the first instance a complaints officer may make contact with those complained about by telephone to establish the grounds of the complaint," she said.

She added that the total time spent by HSE construction staff handling complaints has increased in the past three years.