October 2023 update
The Building Safety Act is well underway
By 1/10/23, all higher-risk buildings should have registered with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR). It has been predicted around 14,000 buildings will be applicable to this law. The next step is collating key building information which will start being reviewed by the BSR from April 2024
New Fire guidance
New fire guidance has been issued to help improve compliance to both the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order and Fire Safety (England) Regs. The aim of the document is to improve cooperation and coordination between Responsible Persons (RPs), increase requirements in relation to the recording/sharing of fire safety information, and make it easier for enforcement authorities to act against non-compliance
HSE random inspections continue
Inspectors from the Health & Safety Executive are still visiting organisations nationally as part of their 'dust kills' campaign. They have also issued a press release that unannounced visits shall take place between October - March 2024 to assess compliance of organisations who work with metalworking fluids (MWF).
April 2024 update
Organisational stress assessments in the limelight
In light of April being national stress awareness month, businesses are being encouraged to embrace more robust safe systems for managing stress in the workplace. The HSE have advertised their free e-learning tool to help line managers promote and monitor this increasing issue at work.
Building Safety Act, next steps
April marks the next transitional steps in rolling out this recent legislation. The BSR have declared they will start reviewing safety cases and challenge those that haven't submitting anything yet. There has also been an extension to the Building control registration process, allowing a 13 week delay for people to submit their applications by 6/7/2024. This will affect up to 3,261 professionals listed.
Counter-terrorism risk assessments
The new protect duty law referred to as Martyn's law has been in consultation over the last few months with an outcome hoping to be issued in April. Designed to help both large and SME organisations working in the event space to protect the public and their workforce from terrorist threats. The legislation is looking to remain proportionate when putting control measures in place so they will be proposing to introduce a 'standard' and 'enhanced tier' process so that all organisations can comply fairly.