Health and Safety Executive

What is it?

The health and safety executive (HSE) is an independant body that is responsible for health and safety in the workplace. Their job is to make sure that the workplace is safe for the workers, they base their work around the Health and Safety at work act 1974. The legislation that comes with this act is enforced by the HSE they plan regular checks to different workplaces to make sure that the workplace is keeping up to the correct standards of this legislation. If a business is being developed/made they must adhere to this legislation and the HSE will come out once the building is complete to check that the correct amount of safety has been implicated. If it hasn't then the HSE will write a report and advise the business to do certain things to improve the standards, if the building is 'unsafe' for working then further action may take place with the police getting involved so that the building will not be used until it meets requirements.

Fire investigation:

In terms of a fire investigation the police will take a look at the workplace to see if the fire was a caused by a lack of health and safety in the building. The police would look at the report of the HSE to see if the company had been regularly keeping up, for example if in the HSE report they recommended that the owner change the electrics or the plugs because they are inadequate, (and they didn't) and they later find that the plugs did in fact cause the fire then the owner would be at fault for not upgrading the electrics to the correct requirements. However it is also in the interest of the police to see whether the HSE had been regularly checking on that particular workplace, the HSE may have been making mistakes or letting companies be without crossing all of the necessary checks.
The involvement of the Health & Safety executive can be beneficial to a fire investigation because it can help police determine whether the company or another body are at fault for the fire. According to (hse.gov.uk) They help with the investigation because they can give the police the reports of when they travelled to the workplace, these reports explain the necessary checks that had to happen including if there was anything currently wrong with the workplace. In terms of the investigation if the documents say that a gas was faulty/not working when they arrived and the fire was cause by the gas then the police must decide whose fault that is, is it the fault of the owner for not getting it fixed or is it the fault of the gas man that "supposedly" came to fix the problem.