Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent discussions she has had with the Health and Safety Executive’s Energy Division on the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on backlogs of safety critical maintenance work on oil and gas installations on the UK Continental Shelf; and if she will list any recent actions that the HSE has taken against duty holders in this area.

No recent discussions have taken place between the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Energy Division on this specific issue. Recognising the potential impact of the pandemic in 2020, HSE wrote to production installation duty holders with a detailed question set on maintenance and inspection backlogs, in order to evaluate and quantify the specific impact of pandemic-related down-manning on backlog. HSE’s analysis of the data provided in response to its question set indicated an increase in backlogs. This was because duty holders had postponed maintenance shutdowns because their approach to managing the risk of COVID infection required reduced manning levels that were insufficient to undertake the shutdowns.

HSE took the following steps:

(i) Identified at the outset of the pandemic that maintenance would be affected and carried out inspections using the existing ‘Maintenance management’ Inspection Guide, which HSE developed in 2014 specifically to address backlogs.

(ii) Worked with duty holders to look at alternative ways of carrying out the work, such as mini shutdowns and the use of “flotels” and walk-to-work vessels etc.

(iii) Set up a working group with Oil & Gas UK and its members to specifically look at addressing the backlog issue.

(iv) Took enforcement action where backlogs were not being managed safely.

(v) Set up a program of Process Safety Leadership inspections starting in Q1 2022, of which asset integrity and maintenance backlog will form a key component.

(vi) Worked with senior industry integrity personnel in the Asset Integrity Task Group to highlight and address the issue.

(vii) Repeating the data gathering exercise in Q1 2022 to check that duty holders are managing their backlogs as they stated and to take enforcement action if they are not.