, Building
A four-storey refurbishment in Leeds. Tuesday, ten past nine. A woman in a hard hat and a high-visibility jacket signs the visitors book and produces a warrant. She is an inspector from the Health and Safety Executive and she does not need an appointment.
Within twenty minutes she has photographed a scaffold with a missing toe board on the second lift, asked to see the inspection records for it, and asked who the principal contractor is. That last question is the one that matters, because the answer determines who carries the duties she is about to test.
Inspectors arrive for reasons, and most of them are avoidable
Visits are not random in the way site teams assume. They come from a short list of triggers.
Some are planned. HSE runs targeted inspection campaigns in construction, historically focused on themes such as work at height, occupational lung disease from dust, and asbestos in refurbishment. If your site is the sort of work in scope during a campaign period, it can be selected simply for being visible.
Some follow a notification. Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, a project must be notified to HSE on form F10 where construction work is scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point, or where it exceeds 500 person days. A notified project is a project HSE knows about.
Some follow a RIDDOR report. The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 require you to report deaths, specified injuries such as fractures other than to fingers and toes, injuries causing more than seven days of incapacitation, listed dangerous occurrences and certain occupational diseases. Over-three-day injuries must be recorded but not reported. A report of a scaffold collapse will bring somebody out.
And some follow a complaint. A neighbour, a member of the public, a subcontractor who was told to work off a ladder, or a passer-by who photographed someone on a roof edge. HSE takes anonymous concerns.
Work at height is the first thing they look at, because it is what kills people
HSE publishes annual workplace fatal injury statistics, and construction has for many years accounted for the largest number of worker deaths of any industry, with falls from height the single largest cause. That pattern shapes what an inspector looks at within the first five minutes of walking onto your site.
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 do not ban working at height. They impose a hierarchy: avoid it where reasonably practicable, then prevent falls using an existing safe place of work or the right equipment, then mitigate the distance and consequences of a fall. Collective protection before personal protection. Edge protection before a harness.
The specifics that get written up are unglamorous and consistent. Incomplete scaffold with no scafftag or a tag showing an out-of-date inspection. Scaffold inspection records not available, when the regulations require inspection before first use, at intervals not exceeding seven days, and after anything likely to have affected its strength. Ladders used as a workplace rather than as access. Unprotected leading edges and open risers. Mobile towers assembled by somebody without the training certificate.
Dust is the other one. Uncontrolled cutting of concrete, stone or blockwork without water suppression or on-tool extraction is a Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 issue, and silica exposure is now a standing enforcement theme rather than a footnote.
Notices change what you can do, immediately
An inspector has two statutory notices available, and they do different things.
An improvement notice says a statutory provision is being contravened and sets a period within which it must be put right. The period must be at least 21 days. Work can continue in the meantime. You can appeal to an employment tribunal within 21 days, and the appeal suspends the notice until it is heard.
A prohibition notice says an activity involves or will involve a risk of serious personal injury, and stops it. It can take effect immediately or be deferred. An appeal does not suspend a prohibition notice unless the tribunal so directs, which is the point of it. If your only scaffold is prohibited, your site stops.
Both are published on the HSE public register of enforcement notices, which is searchable by anyone, including clients running a prequalification check on you.
Fee for Intervention makes the inspection itself expensive
Since October 2012, where an inspector identifies a material breach of health and safety law and confirms it in writing, HSE recovers its costs from the duty holder. This is Fee for Intervention, and it is charged at an hourly rate set in regulations, covering the inspector's time on site, the time spent writing it up, and any further investigation.
The rate was £124 per hour when the scheme started and has been revised upwards several times since, so check the current figure on HSE's own site rather than relying on a number you remember. What matters more than the rate is the scope: a material breach that triggers a serious investigation can run to many hours of recoverable time, and the invoice arrives regardless of whether a notice was served or a prosecution follows.
There is a disputes process, with an independent element, but disputing a Fee for Intervention invoice is not a fast or cheap exercise.
Prosecution is sentenced against your turnover
Where a breach is serious, HSE prosecutes under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, usually sections 2 and 3, which impose duties towards employees and towards others affected by your undertaking. Both are qualified by what is reasonably practicable, and the burden of showing that sits with the defendant.
Since February 2016, sentencing in England and Wales has followed the Sentencing Council's definitive guideline for health and safety offences. The court assesses culpability and the seriousness of the risk created, then places the offence in a range calibrated against the organisation's turnover. Large turnover produces large fines for the same conduct. Individuals, including directors, can be prosecuted where an offence was committed with their consent or connivance or through their neglect, and disqualification from acting as a director can follow.
The cost that is rarely modelled is the aftermath: the insurance renewal, the prequalification questionnaires that ask about enforcement action for the next five years, and the clients who quietly stop tendering to you.
Where this shows up in the game
Construction arrives in Business Baron with the Property & Construction Track, an add-on to the full game. Inspectors turn up unannounced on a risk rating that complaints pull forward, and the ladder runs from advice to a notice that closes you that day. Safety is a slow variable, and nothing about it is dramatic until it is.