Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 29 November 2021 to Question 80980 on Offshore Industry: Continental Shelf, what the percentage increase was in the maintenance backlogs based on the data provided to the HSE.

The data provided to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) indicates that there has been a distinct increasing trend in maintenance backlogs. Operators record and classify their maintenance backlog figures according to their own safety management systems. There is no legal requirement for operators to be record it in a particular way. This means that it is difficult and potentially misleading to compare the maintenance figures for different operators in absolute terms. What is clear though is that there is a clear trend of an increase in maintenance backlog among UKCS operators. HSE’s focus is on how effectively operators risk manage their backlogs until they have dealt with them.