Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of (a) formal written advice notices and (b) enforcement notices issued by HSE in each month since March 2020 were in relation to (i) employee safety concerns arising from covid-19 and (ii) concerns of inadequate ventilation as a risk of covid-19 transmission.
Since March 2020, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has dealt with 18337 COVID-19 workplace concerns and has carried out a total of 103011 COVID-19 spot checks.
Table 1 below shows the numbers of COVID-19 workplace concerns and spot checks resulting in written correspondence and enforcement notices.
HSE’s systems do not record the level of detail which would be required to establish how many concerns related to inadequate ventilation, therefore it is not possible to determine what proportion of the cases identified related specifically to ventilation concerns.
Table 1
| COVID concerns with an outcome of 'Written correspondence' | COVID concerns with an outcome of Notice | COVID spot checks with an outcome of ‘Written correspondence’ | COVID spot checks with an outcome of Notice |
Mar-20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Apr-20 | 45 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
May-20 | 42 | 8 | 3 | 1 |
Jun-20 | 38 | 10 | 18 | 8 |
Jul-20 | 41 | 4 | 128 | 25 |
Aug-20 | 22 | 3 | 134 | 23 |
Sep-20 | 39 | 5 | 160 | 30 |
Oct-20 | 32 | 0 | 251 | 30 |
Nov-20 | 36 | 1 | 127 | 22 |
Dec-20 | 16 | 0 | 104 | 14 |
Jan-21 | 15 | 1 | 63 | 7 |
February 2021 (to 02.02.21) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Totals | 326 | 33 | 990 | 160 |
Note: This data was extracted from HSE’s live operational database on 3rd February 2021 and is subject to change e.g. as there can be a delay of up to 10 working days before actions are updated on the database.