Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that former oil refineries being converted to bulk storage and distribution terminals meet post-Buncefield health and safety requirements.

The COMAH Competent Authority (CA), comprising HSE and the environment agencies, is responsible for ensuring that oil refineries and fuel storage and distribution terminals meet new safety and environmental standards introduced in 2009 following the Buncefield fire and explosion. The standards were developed jointly by industry and the CA and published by the Process Safety Leadership Group (PSLG).

Refineries were required to produce risk-based action plans to implement the PSLG safety standards at their existing fuel storage facilities. HSE led the assessment of these plans during 2011 and has been inspecting sites to ensure the planned improvements are made. The timings of upgrades to containment standards at refineries' existing fuel storage facilities is based on risk and will vary for each site. Agreed improvements are embedded in environment inspection plans for each site and followed up to ensure measures are implemented on time.

The CA is working with refineries undergoing conversion to fuel storage and distribution terminals to ensure the PSLG standards are applied in full to their new facilities.