The fee for intervention has been put in place to recover costs from you by charging a fee for the time and effort spent trying to fix the matter after you broke health and safety laws. These costs will cover investigating and enforcement action.

What is Fee for intervention (FFI)?

When an investigation is underway at your business investigating work activities, incidents and complaint, if they see material breaches of the law, you will have to pay a fee. The fee is based on the amount of time the inspector has spent identifying the breaches, taking enforcement action, investigating and rectifying the problem.

Why has the FFI being introduced?

The FFI has been introduced as the Government believes if you break health and safety laws you should pay for HSE’s time in putting the matter right. These costs cover investigating and taking enforcement. The FFI is in place to encourage businesses to comply in the first place or put matters right quickly when they don’t. It also helps discourage business who think they can undercut their competitors by not complying with the law and putting people at risk.

Will FFI apply to me?

If you comply with the law you won’t pay a fee.

If your business is inspected for health and safety by another regulator not the HSE such as local authority environmental health officers, the fees will not apply to your business.

FFI will apply to all businesses and organisations inspected by HSE, except for:

■ self-employed people who don’t put people at risk by their work;

■ those who are already paying fees to HSE for the work through other

arrangements; and

■ those who deliberately work with certain biological agents.

What is a material breach?

If your business has broken a health and safety law and the inspector judges it serious enough for them to notify you in writing then this is a material breach. This will either be a notification of contravention, an improvement or prohibition notice, or a prosecution.

Before coming to a conclusion the inspector must apply the principles of

HSE’s Enforcement Policy Statement (www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hse41.pdf) and

Enforcement Management Model (www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/emm.pdf) to ensure

their decision on the level of enforcement action is proportionate to the

circumstances they see.

Examples of material breaches include: not providing guards or effective safety

devices to prevent access to dangerous parts of machinery; or materials containing

asbestos in a poor or damaged condition resulting in the potential to release

asbestos fibres.

The inspector’s written notification will make it clear which contraventions are

material breaches where a fee is payable.

How much might it cost me?

The cost will be calculated by how much time the inspector had spent identifying the material breach, helping you to put it right, investigating and taking enforcement action.

This will include time spent:

■ carrying out visits (including all the time on site during which the material breach

was identified);

■ writing notifications of contravention, improvement or prohibition notices, and

reports;

■ taking statements; and

■ getting specialist support for complex issues.

This total amount of time will be multiplied by the FFI hourly rate to give you the

amount you must pay. For the current FFI hourly rate, visit

www.hse.gov.uk/fee-for-intervention/index.htm.

How do you pay?

HSE will send out invoices generally every two months and you will have 30 days to

pay. Details about how to pay will be included on the invoice.

How Crownford can help

We can help protect your business by ensuring your health and safety procedures are fully up to date and comply with the latest regulations to avoid costly fines. Not only can we offer our support and guidance we also offer peace of mind with our insurance cover, covering intervention costs.

To discuss our intervention cover please call a member of the Crownford Team on

0845 217 2606 or email info@crownford.co.uk