Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the level of (a) safety critical and (b) environmental maintenance backlogs in the offshore oil and gas industry since January 2019 to date.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) uses its Offshore Safety and Environmental Critical Element (SECE) Management and Verification Inspection Guide when inspecting duty holder compliance in this subject. Maintenance backlogs are covered by the Guide and attract a score. The scores have both numeric and descriptive classifications: unacceptable (60), very poor (50), poor (40), broadly compliant (30), fully compliant (20) and exemplary (10).

In 2019, HSE completed 26 SECE inspections and scored 1 x very poor, 9 x poor, 15 x broadly compliant and 1 x fully compliant. In 2020, there were 22 inspections with 4 x poor, 16 x broadly compliant and 2 x fully compliant scores. Since January 2021, there have been 19 inspections with 3 x poor and 16 x broadly compliant scores. Whenever HSE finds examples of non-compliance, they are raised as issues with the duty holder in a letter, and in some cases a notice. These are then monitored to ensure compliance by the due date.

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, which includes several questions on SECE management. This has enabled HSE to assess SECE backlog management for a representative sample of UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) production duty holders. HSE will use the question set again from the start of 2022 as part of its ongoing intervention targeting procedure so that those duty holders that appear not to be managing their SECE backlog effectively can be prioritised for inspection.