Revitalising Health and Safety: Strategy Statement

The Revitalising Health and Safety initiative was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister on 30 March 1999 to inject new impetus and relaunch the health and safety agenda, 25 years after the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Policy | 30 June 2000
Aims of Revitalising Health and Safety:
• to inject new impetus into the health and safety agenda;
• to identify new approaches to reduce further rates of accidents and ill health caused by work, especially approaches relevant to small firms;
• to ensure that our approach to health and safety regulation remains relevant for the changing world of work over the next 25 years; and
• to gain maximum benefit from links between occupational health and safety and other Government programmes.

The Deputy Prime Minister launched a consultation on 1 July 1999, jointly with the Health and Safety Commission, seeking stakeholders’ views and ideas. Section 1 gives details of the consultation, and an analysis of responses is at Annex A.

This Strategy Statement sets out how the Government and Health and Safety Commission will work together to revitalise health and safety. At its heart are the first ever targets for Great Britain’s health and safety system:
• to reduce the number of working days lost per 100,000 workers from work-related injury and ill health by 30% by 2010;
• to reduce the incidence rate of fatal and major injury accidents by 10% by 2010;
• to reduce the incidence rate of cases of work-related ill health by 20% by 2010;
• achieve half the improvement under each target by 2004.

Details of the new targets are given in Section 2. These are underpinned by the 10-point Strategy Statement in Section 3, which sets the direction for the health and safety system over the next 10 years.

Section 4 sets out an Action Plan which the Government and Health and Safety Commission will take forward. The Action Plan incorporates many ideas suggested in the consultation and focuses, in particular, on what more Government can do over the short to medium term to support the Health and Safety Commission’s existing programme of work.