Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Health and Safety Executive inspector posts are currently vacant; and what assessment she has made of the effect of those vacancies on the ability of the Health and Safety Executive to attend incidents.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) currently has 29 regulatory inspector vacancies.

HSE does not investigate all incidents reported to them, only the most serious work-related incidents are investigated. These include those which result in the death of a person and incidents which meet HSE’s incident selection criteria.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/internalops/og/ogprocedures/investigation/incidselcrits.htm

HSE is an arms-length body and the Chair has assured me that current resources are sufficient for HSE to respond to incidents that meet HSE’s incident selection criteria for investigation.