Costs recovery

The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) new costs recovery scheme, “Fee for Intervention”, has been postponed until October 2012. It had been due to start in April.

Under the scheme, HSE will attempt to recover costs from those who break health and safety laws for the time and effort it has spent on investigating the breach and taking enforcement action.

Gordon MacDonald, HSE’s programme director, says: “The government has agreed that it is right that those who break the law should pay their fair share of the costs to put things right—and not the public purse.”