The government is set to announce moves to remove thousands of businesses from the need to have health and safety inspections while making it harder to successfully sue them in negligence claims.
It is preparing to remove or reform over 3,000 regulations and will introduce binding new rules on the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities so that many firms will no longer have to face potentially disruptive health and safety inspections and will only have to do so if they operate in high-risk areas such as the construction industry.
There will also be new legislation introduced which will mean that firms will only be held responsible for civil damages in health and safety cases if it can be proved they have acted negligently. The news was welcomed by the Institute of Directors, whose head of regulatory policy, Alexander Ehmann, said excessive regulation costs time and money which would be better spent on hiring staff and “building up British business both here and abroad”.
