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Health And Safety

Volume 171: debated on Wednesday 25 April 1990

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To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many field inspectors there were within the Health and Safety Executive for each year from 1974 to 1989 inclusive; how many workplaces they were responsible for in each year and what was the ratio of inspectors to workplaces in each year.

[holding answer 24 April 1990]: The information available is given for those factory, agricultural, mines and quarries inspectors working from district or area offices and the number of registered workplaces for which they were responsible. Field inspectors do not include nuclear installations or specialist inspectors.

YearInspector numbers1 2 3Workplaces registered4Ratio of inspectors to workplaces5
(1 July) 1975615·0n.a.
(1 April) 1976670·5n.a.
1977878·0n.a.
(1 January) 1978889·0280,7161:456
1979888·0309,7571:432
1980934·5318,9361:422
1981905·5318,0501:432
1982857·56585,2961:843
1983803·56477,4091:734
1984781·0668,0371:855
(1 April) 1985793·0724,2271:913
1986754·0720,2431:955
1987757·5719,7381:950
1988711·5707,4741:994
1989722·0692,0781:959
1HSE was established on 1 January 1975. Centrally maintained staffing figures became available from July of that year.
2 Agricultural inspectors joined HSE from MAFF from March 1976, with the field force being in place by March 1977.
3The Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate transferred to the Department of Environment on 1 April 1987 and have been excluded from the figures.
4The total for 1978 is for fixed premises registered with Factory Inspectorate only. Premises registered with Mines and Quarries Inspectorate are included from 1979, with those registered with Agricultural Inspectorate being included from 1984.

5 For consistency, mines and quarries inspectors have been excluded from the calculation of the ratio in 1978, and agricultural inspectors have been excluded from 1978 to 1983 (see Note 4 ).

6 The 1982 figure was the first produced from a computerised database based on the Department of Employment Census. The database initially included premises for which HSE was not the enforcing authority: this accounts for the high figures for 1982 and 1983.