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Local council's ‘elf ‘n' safety' officers have such a bad image that they have become staple tabloid jokes and the killjoys who – according to columnist Richard Littlejohn ‘stole my country'. It may be unsurprising then that their professional organisation – the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) – blamed the media, when quizzed by a recent DWP select committee on how to tackle the negative perception of health and safety. Richard Jones, IOSH's policy and technical director, whinged about negative and misleading coverage, ‘… a lot of time and effort (is spent) in debunking these things. Most of the stories… affect public opinion and are centred on fairly trivial hazards rather than the big issues we see'. I'm all for a bit of media bashing, but hold on a minute, what are these ‘big issues'? Highlighted on the HSE's website is the supposed threat to the public caused by toppling memorials in cemeteries. Even the Daily Mail couldn't make that up. It was an HSE press release – rather than the redtops – which announced the setting up of a ‘ladder exchange' initiative to replace your ‘dodgy' ladder with an approved issue. And how can you debunk Mr Littlejohn's revelation that Watford BC had banned the town's traditional bonfire celebrations when, indeed, it had done just that? IOSH admits that some stories are not misleading, but are a consequence of over zealous enforcement. However, it blames rogue consultants who oversell their services. It claims the over cautious ‘ban everything' brigade ‘may not be IOSH members at all'. It concludes that the solution is regulation of its own profession: ‘There are no controls and that's why we are calling to make health and safety a regulated profession. The trouble is, at present, anyone can set themselves up as a health and safety consultant or adviser'. While I am also not adverse to a bit of consultant bashing, it seems beyond parody that an organisation which stands accused of over regulating everyone else's lives should suggest tighter regulation of its own. However, trying to reign in the zealots – regulated or not – who over interpret official requirements – has failed. After all, it was three years ago when the HSE/C admitted at a Health and safety: Sensible management or bureaucratic straightjacket? briefing that it had lost control of a ‘sensible balance in the management of risk'. Since then, everyone has paid lip service to combating disproportionate responses. The sector is littered with good practice guidelines and training courses, while the HSE/C has issued a set of key principles emphasising the need to balance benefits and risks, and councils are urged to sign up to the HSE's ‘sensible risk campaign'. Yet, still, common sense has not prevailed because this whole approach misses the point. The problem of ‘risk aversion gone mad' goes far beyond poorly-trained health and safety officers or self-certificated cowboy consultants. One problem is cowardice by local government. Obsessive risk assessment is often more about councils cynically protecting their own backs than protecting the public or employees from harm. Frightened of taking the rap, they prefer to wrap us all in cotton wool, banning everything from hanging baskets to Christmas decorations. We are told that local authorities only adopt this ‘better safe than sorry' approach because of the popular appetite for ‘compensation culture'. This implicitly caricatures the public as greedy opportunists waiting for the council to slip up so they can call in the lawyers. But how perverse for councils to paint themselves as victims of public litigiousness when they have accommodated this culture, and often fuelled it. Unfortunately, local authorities have become enthusiastic messengers of such fear mongering. The relentless promotion of the newly-created safer communities boards, community safety advisers and community safety partnerships encourage the view that safety should trump all other considerations. It is often councils who preach that we are all at risk of everything, everywhere, everyday. A sense of vulnerability has been embedded in the public imagination by local government's new role as a nanny state protecting us all from the bogeymen that they tell us stalk the land. Until we confront this broader culture of fear, pointing the finger at either elf ‘n' safety or tabloid excesses is merely a delusional exercise in scapegoating. Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas

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WHITEHALL

Wrap up about the risks

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