The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published its Business Plan for 2025-2026, and for workers across Great Britain, the document contains significant commitments alongside notable challenges.
This analysis examines the 63-page plan through a workers' rights lens, highlighting what matters most for people doing the work.
The Scale of the Challenge
The HSE's own statistics paint a stark picture of workplace health and safety in Britain today. 12,000 working people are suffering from work-related ill health. Work-related stress, depression, or anxiety alone led to 16.4 million days lost in 2023-2024. An estimated 543,000 workers were affected by musculoskeletal disorders, accounting for 32% of all work-related ill health.
These figures represent real people: workers unable to earn a living, families coping with illness caused by employment, and communities affected when workplace tragedies occur.
The HSE's plan acknowledges a fundamental principle: "Good health and safety is good business." But more importantly, it recognises that protecting workers remains the core mission.
Mental Health and Stress: Long Overdue Attention
For years, workplace mental health received far less attention than physical safety. The current plan signals a significant shift, placing a specific focus on mental health and stress as a strategic priority.
Key commitments include:
- Building an evidence base to understand the complexities of mental health at work
- Identifying practical measures workplaces can implement to prevent work-related stress
- Targeting inspections on issues that cause stress, including violence and aggression at work
- Engaging with the government's "Make Work Pay" agenda and the "Get Britain Working" White Paper
The plan frames stress not as an individual failing but as a consequence of workplaces exposing people to harmful conditions. This structural understanding represents progress.
What workers should watch for: The HSE's research programme on practical stress prevention measures is due by the fourth quarter of 2025. Trade unions and worker representatives should monitor these findings and press for swift implementation.
Asbestos: Confronting the Legacy Killer
Asbestos remains the single biggest cause of work-related deaths in Great Britain. The HSE's plan demonstrates ongoing efforts to address this continuing crisis.
Key commitments:
- Consulting on targeted reforms to the Control of Asbestos Regulations
- Focusing inspection and investigation on those most at risk
- Raising awareness among workers about the dangers of disturbing asbestos
- Continuing to regulate licence compliance for asbestos contractors
These measures matter because asbestos is not a problem of the past. It remains present in buildings across the country, and workers in construction, maintenance, and demolition face daily exposure risks.
A significant concern: The consultation on regulatory reforms is scheduled only for the fourth quarter of 2025. Given the continuing toll of asbestos-related disease, faster action would better serve worker protection.
Building Safety: Post-Grenfell Promises Must Become Reality
The Grenfell Tower fire claimed 72 lives. The Phase 2 report delivered damning findings about industry failures. The HSE now hosts the Building Safety Regulator, and the current plan acknowledges that "the industry is still struggling to effectively manage and address building safety risks."
What is promised:
- Supporting the government's Remediation Acceleration Plan to remove unsafe cladding
- Ensuring residents in higher-risk buildings are safe and their concerns addressed
- Regulating building control professionals and raising competency standards
- Implementing recommendations from the Grenfell Inquiry
Significant developments: Approximately 12,500 higher-risk buildings are now registered in England – the first complete picture of the higher-risk building stock. This information should drive targeted regulatory action.
The plan also commits to consulting on updates to Approved Document B (fire safety guidance) and researching fire spread on rigid insulation.
Workers' rights dimension: Construction workers should not be compelled to install dangerous materials. Residents deserve homes that do not threaten their lives. The success of these commitments will be measured by action, not words.
"Forever Chemicals": Regulating Persistent Hazards
PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as "forever chemicals" – are finally receiving regulatory attention. The HSE commits to continuing work on these substances, with a particular focus on restrictions for firefighting foams.
By the fourth quarter of 2025, a restriction opinion under UK REACH is scheduled for finalisation.
For workers in firefighting, manufacturing, and numerous other sectors, this matters enormously. These chemicals accumulate in human bodies and the environment. Restricting their use represents a public health victory, provided enforcement follows.
Net Zero and New Technologies: Safety Cannot Wait
The transition to clean energy is essential, but safety must accompany innovation. The HSE is supporting new technologies while attempting to ensure risks are identified and managed.
Areas of focus:
- Floating offshore wind platforms
- Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS)
- Hydrogen production facilities
- Repurposing offshore installations
A crucial admission for workers: The HSE acknowledges there is "limited understanding of the health and safety risks and hazards associated with CCUS technology and alternative liquid fuels." While honest, this means trade unions and workers must demand precaution as these industries develop.
The plan commits to identifying knowledge gaps and engaging with industry to ensure "health and safety are considered early in projects." That early consideration is critical, as retrofitting safety is always more difficult than designing it in.
Enforcement and Accountability: Will the Regulator Bite?
A regulator's effectiveness depends on its enforcement capability. The HSE's plan includes several important operational targets:
- Investigating 85% of standard concerns within agreed timescales
- Completing 80% of fatal investigations within 12 months of taking primacy
- Completing 90% of non-fatal investigations within 12 months
- Applying a risk-based model to determine which incidents warrant investigation
- Expanding internal legal resources to lead prosecutions
However, significant tensions emerge: The HSE candidly admits that "demand has exceeded our capacity" and that in some areas, "simply maintaining performance is an organisational challenge due to resource constraints."
The practical meaning: The HSE is operating with stretched resources. While aiming to deliver 14,000 proactive inspections, they acknowledge that focusing on health priorities "may limit our ability to achieve the target." When the regulator acknowledges that "responding with agility" may "impact some targets," workers must understand this as an admission that some regulatory activity will not occur.
Fee for Intervention: A Promised Fairness Review
The HSE is reviewing its application of the Fee for Intervention scheme "to ensure it is fair for everyone." The plan promises fees will be "proportionate and consistently applied when there is a failure to manage risks that could seriously harm people."
For workers, this matters because the Fee for Intervention mechanism is designed to recover costs from dutyholders who breach health and safety law. If applied unfairly, the scheme loses credibility. If applied too weakly, it fails to deter employers who cut corners.
Chemical Safety: Capacity Constraints and Backlogs
The HSE regulates chemicals through multiple regimes – pesticides, biocides, REACH, and others. The plan is unusually candid about operational problems: "skill shortages affecting workflow and task completion" and "backlogs that have accumulated due to demand exceeding available resources."
The target is to deliver 95% of planned permissions to legislative timescales, though the acknowledged challenges make this ambitious.
For workers in manufacturing, agriculture, and other sectors using chemicals, timely assessment matters. Delayed or outdated decisions can mean continued exposure to hazardous substances while safety questions remain unresolved.
What the Plan Reveals About Regulatory Capacity
Several structural issues emerge from the HSE's own assessment:
1. Resources do not match responsibilities
The HSE plans £363 million total expenditure, with £206 million from grant in aid and £157 million recovered through cost recovery from regulated industries. The organisation faces a £7 million efficiency challenge from the previous Spending Review, alongside inflationary pressures and pay constraints.
When the regulator's budget is squeezed, enforcement activity suffers. When enforcement suffers, preventable worker deaths and injuries occur.
2. Cost recovery creates inherent tensions
More than 43% of the HSE's budget comes from charging the industries it regulates. This creates an inherent structural tension. While the HSE insists this does not compromise independence, workers and their representatives should remain vigilant about whether fee-paying dutyholders receive different treatment.
3. The "growth mission" framing raises questions
Throughout the document, the HSE emphasises supporting "the government's growth mission" and being "mindful of the impact on growth." While the plan pledges to maintain standards, workers have learned from experience that "growth" can become code for deregulation and weakened protections.
What Workers and Their Representatives Should Do
1. Know and assert legal rights
The HSE's guidance is becoming more accessible. Workers should use it. When employers claim something is not required, the guidance provides a means of verification.
2. Report concerns through available channels
The HSE aims to investigate 85% of standard concerns within agreed timescales. But investigations can only occur when concerns are reported. Workers who identify dangers should report them – through trade unions, through the HSE's concerns system, through safety representatives. Silence protects no one.
3. Participate in consultations
The plan announces forthcoming consultations on:
- Asbestos regulations
- RIDDOR (reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences)
- Pressure Systems Safety Regulations
- Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations
- Biocides approvals
- Approved Document B (building regulations)
These consultations provide opportunities for worker voices to be heard. Responses should not be left to employers and industry bodies alone.
4. Maintain and strengthen collective organisation
The HSE explicitly states they "do not act alone" and that "collaboration and partnerships with local authorities, trade unions, stakeholders, industry bodies and dutyholders significantly increases our reach, influence and impact."
Trade unions are named as essential partners. For workers not in unions, joining one strengthens collective voice. For those already represented, ensuring safety representatives use the HSE's tools and hold employers accountable remains essential.
Conclusion: A Mixed Picture for Worker Protection
The HSE's 2025-2026 Business Plan contains genuine commitments to protecting workers: sustained focus on mental health, continued action on asbestos, building safety reforms, chemical regulation, and enforcement targets.
But the document also reveals an organisation under significant pressure – attempting to expand its role with constrained resources, balancing its enforcement responsibilities against political pressure to support "growth," and frankly acknowledging that "demand has exceeded our capacity."
For workers, the message is clear: the regulator provides important tools and mechanisms, but cannot substitute for workplace organisation. The most effective protection combines strong regulation with active worker engagement. Using the HSE's tools, holding employers accountable through collective action, reporting dangers, participating in consultations, and maintaining union organisation remain essential strategies.
As the HSE's own foreword states: "What we do matters. It matters to everyone in Great Britain." Workers should hold the HSE to its commitments while recognising that ultimately, workplace safety depends on worker vigilance and organisation.
Source: HSE