Health and safety enforcement and regulation in the UK needs to be radically overhauled if needless accidents and injuries in the workplace are to be stamped out, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa) has said.
In response to the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) consultation on the future of health and safety in the UK, Rospa, said a "new dynamic" around health and safety was needed.
Too often there was a them-and-us, "HSE-centric" view of health and safety among employers, it added, pointing out that thinking around health and safety at work rarely encompassed work-related road injuries.
The business case for controlling losses that resulted from accidents and ill health had also become stronger now that the UK was in the midst of a deep recession, it said.
Key recommendations included encouraging organisations to publish their health and safety performance, so that the HSE could better target its resources, and making better use of non-HSE professionals in investigations and remedial programmes.
Rospa also called for the development of a national "health and safety services" network, completely separate from enforcement activities, to help firms identify the services they need.
Tom Mullarkey, Rospa's chief executive, said: "The HSE needs to establish new and imaginative relationships with other key actors across the health and safety delivery landscape."