• The Fire Precautions Act 1971, enforced by fire authorities;

• The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, enforced by the Health & Safety Executive inspectorates including the factory, agriculture, nuclear installations, mines & quarries inspectorates and by the railway inspectorate, industrial pollution inspectorate and local authority environmental health officers;

• The Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975, enforced by local authorities;

• The Food & Environment Protection Act 1985, which deals with pesticide use, and is enforced by the agricultural inspectorate and other authorised persons.

In general, two types of notice exist. An improvement notice can be issued when there has been a breach of a statutory requirement. A prohibition notice is issued where the risk to health or safety is so great that an activity must be stopped.

The Register

Each of the authorities would set up a register containing details of notices issued after the Act comes into force on April 1 1989. The register would be indexed and available for inspection at all reasonable hours without charge at the authority's premises. A national inspectorate would be able to keep a local register in each of its areas instead of a single central register.

The authority would supply copies of register entries to anyone inspecting it, and could make a reasonable charge for this. However, they would not be obliged to supply copies to anyone who did not inspect the register in person.

The register would contain notices affecting the public, but not those which exclusively affect employees (who should already have access to them). However, a notice which primarily affected the workforce but also had public implications would go onto the register.

The register would not have to contain the full notice, but must give "sufficient particulars to convey the substance of the notice". Thus, an authority which keeps summaries of notices on a computer data base would be able to use the data base as its register.

Timescales

A notice would have to go onto the register within 14 days of being served. However, where there is a statutory right of appeal against a notice, details would only be entered 14 days after the end of the period allowed for appeal. If an appeal is actually made, the notice would be entered within 14 days of the final decision. No entry would be made if a notice is overturned. Notices would stay on the register for at least 3 years.

Trade secrets

If the owner of a premises claims that a notice reveals details of a trade secret, then the details he regards as sensitive would not be disclosed. Only the fact that a notice has been served, and the statutory provisions breached, would be entered. The authority would then draft a summary which it believed excluded the trade secret information. If the owner agreed, this draft, or an agreed alternative would go on the register. If no agreement could be reached the owner could appeal to the Minister; if he did not the authority's draft would be entered.