What Does the HSE Actually Do?

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the national regulator for workplace health and safety in Great Britain. It inspects workplaces, investigates serious incidents, issues improvement and prohibition notices, and prosecutes employers who break the law.

Its authority comes from the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The Act places a general duty on employers to protect the health, safety and welfare of employees, so far as is reasonably practicable, along with anyone else affected by their work.

The regulator also charges for its time. Where an inspector finds a material breach of the law, the Fee for Intervention scheme bills the business at £188 an hour, the rate in force from 1 April 2026.

This guide explains the role of the Health and Safety Executive, its enforcement powers, what it expects of employers, and when it is likely to visit. Every figure is checked against hse.gov.uk and government sources.

The HSE at a Glance

The Role of the Health and Safety Executive

The HSE was created on 1 January 1975 following the Robens Report of 1972, which recommended a single unified framework for workplace safety regulation. Fifty years on, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 remains the foundation of its authority.

The purpose of the HSE is to prevent death, injury and ill health caused by work. In practice its role covers five broad functions.

• Regulation and guidance. The HSE proposes new regulations, publishes Approved Codes of Practice, and produces free guidance that sets out what compliance looks like in each sector.
• Inspection. Inspectors carry out proactive visits to higher-risk workplaces and sectors, checking that risks are being managed in practice as well as on paper.
• Investigation. The HSE investigates workplace deaths, serious injuries, dangerous occurrences and complaints to establish causes and identify breaches of the law.
• Enforcement. Where the law is being broken, inspectors can give advice, serve improvement or prohibition notices, or bring a prosecution.
• Licensing. The HSE operates licensing and permissioning regimes for high-hazard activities, including licensed asbestos removal and explosives manufacture.

The HSE does not regulate every workplace directly. Under the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998, local authorities enforce health and safety law in lower-risk premises such as offices, shops, hotels and restaurants, while the HSE covers construction, manufacturing, agriculture, utilities and other higher-risk sectors.

Alongside the 1974 Act, the HSE enforces a large body of secondary legislation. The most significant for most employers are the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, RIDDOR 2013, the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) and the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM).

What Powers Does the HSE Have?

HSE inspectors hold some of the strongest powers of any UK regulator. They are set out in section 20 of the 1974 Act and in the enforcement provisions that follow it.

Inspection and Investigation

An inspector may enter any premises the HSE regulates at any reasonable time, or at any time where there is a dangerous situation, without giving notice. There is no requirement to book an appointment and no right to turn an inspector away.

During a visit an inspector can examine plant and substances, take measurements, photographs and samples, require documents and records to be produced, and interview anyone they believe holds relevant information. They can also order areas to be left undisturbed and seize any article or substance that presents imminent danger.

Improvement Notices

An improvement notice is served where an inspector believes a legal provision is being contravened. It states what is wrong and sets a deadline for putting it right, which must be at least 21 days.

The recipient can appeal to an employment tribunal within 21 days, and the notice is suspended until the appeal is decided. Failing to comply with a notice is a criminal offence in its own right.

Prohibition Notices

A prohibition notice is served where an activity involves, or will involve, a risk of serious personal injury. It stops the activity, and it can take effect immediately.

Unlike an improvement notice, an appeal does not suspend a prohibition notice unless the tribunal directs otherwise. The activity stays stopped until the problem is fixed.

Prosecution

In the most serious cases the HSE prosecutes in the criminal courts. Under the Sentencing Council guideline for health and safety offences, fines are linked to turnover and culpability, and for large organisations they can run into millions of pounds.

Individuals are exposed too. Directors and managers can be prosecuted personally where an offence was committed with their consent, connivance or neglect, and imprisonment of up to two years is available for most offences under the Act.

Fee for Intervention: What an HSE Visit Can Cost

Since October 2012 the HSE has operated Fee for Intervention (FFI) under the Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012. If an inspector finds a material breach of health and safety law, the business pays for the time the HSE spends identifying the breach and helping to put it right.

The current FFI rate is £188 an hour, effective from 1 April 2026. The rate rises most years, so a figure quoted in older guidance is likely to be out of date.

A material breach exists where the inspector judges the contravention serious enough to notify in writing. That includes a notification of contravention, an improvement notice, a prohibition notice or a prosecution.

FFI invoices cover inspection time, report writing, specialist support and correspondence, so even a visit that ends with a written notification and no formal notice can cost four figures. There is a formal disputes process for businesses that consider an invoice wrong.

What the HSE Expects of Employers

The HSE publishes clear expectations for every employer, whatever the size of the business. Four obligations come up in almost every inspection.

A written health and safety policy. HSE guidance confirms that if you have five or more employees you must write your policy down. It should state who does what, when and how, and it should reflect your actual operations rather than a generic template.

Suitable and sufficient risk assessments. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to assess significant risks and record the findings at five or more employees. That duty covers psychosocial hazards as well as physical ones, and the HSE has signalled increased enforcement on workplace stress and psychosocial risks in 2026.

RIDDOR reporting. Deaths, specified injuries, certain occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences must be reported to the HSE. Under RIDDOR 2013, deaths and specified injuries must be notified by the quickest practicable means without delay and reported within 10 days, while injuries that keep a worker off normal duties for more than seven days must be reported within 15 days of the accident.

Consultation, training and information. Employers must consult employees on health and safety, provide the training and supervision needed to work safely, and display the health and safety law poster or hand out the equivalent leaflet.

When and Why the HSE Visits

Most businesses only ever see an inspector for one of three reasons. Proactive inspections target sectors and activities with the worst injury records, such as construction, agriculture, manufacturing and workplace transport.

Reactive investigations follow a RIDDOR report, a death, or a concern raised by a worker or member of the public. A complaint from a current or former employee is one of the most common triggers for an unannounced visit.

Preparation is straightforward if the paperwork already exists. Inspectors will ask for the written policy, risk assessments, training records, accident records and evidence that reported incidents were investigated, so those documents need to be current and easy to produce.

What the Latest Figures Show

The scale of the HSE's task is set out in its own annual statistics. Provisional figures published in July 2026 record 126 workers killed in work-related accidents in 2025/26.

Falls from height remain the biggest single cause, with 31 deaths, followed by being struck by a moving vehicle (24) and being struck by a moving object (21). Construction recorded the most deaths of any sector at 25, ahead of agriculture, forestry and fishing at 22.

The ill health picture is far larger. HSE key figures for 2024/25 report 1.9 million workers suffering from a work-related illness, including 964,000 cases of work-related stress, depression or anxiety, with 40.1 million working days lost to work-related ill health and injury.

Those stress figures explain why psychosocial risk has moved up the enforcement agenda. An employer whose risk assessments ignore workload, stress and burnout is now exposed on paper before an inspector even arrives.

The Building Safety Regulator Has Left the HSE

One structural change is worth knowing about. The Building Safety Regulator, set up inside the HSE after the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, became a standalone body on 27 January 2026, sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The move is a step towards a single construction regulator, another Grenfell Inquiry recommendation. It does not change the HSE's day-to-day role: workplace health and safety on construction sites, including CDM 2015, stays with the HSE.

Where Employers Get Caught Out

The same failure points appear again and again in enforcement notices and FFI invoices.

• No written policy at five or more employees. This is the easiest breach for an inspector to find, because it takes one question to establish.
• Generic or stale risk assessments. A template downloaded years ago that does not match current activities fails the suitable and sufficient test.
• Unreported RIDDOR incidents. Failing to report is a separate criminal offence, and an unreported injury discovered later suggests wider non-compliance.
• Ignoring stress and psychosocial risks. Risk assessments that only cover physical hazards no longer reflect what the HSE expects.
• Assuming FFI only follows prosecution. Any material breach triggers cost recovery at £188 an hour, even where no notice is ever served.

The common thread is documentation. Across compliance regimes the principle is the same, from an HSE inspection to a Cyber Essentials assessment: if it is not written down, you cannot evidence it. Our IASME Cyber Essentials checklist shows the same evidence-first approach applied to information security.

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