THE number of people killed or injured at work is set to rise because of job losses and budget cutbacks at the government's health and safety watchdog.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is planning to shed up to 350 jobs and cut spending by £8 million by March 2008. According to experts and trade unionists, the organisation is facing an "unprecedented crisis" that will result in more accidents and more deaths.

"We are concerned cuts will lead to a rise in the number of workplace fatalities, major accidents and occupational ill-health," said Ian Tasker, safety officer with the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

"These are all tragedies and injustices that impact on workers and their families, and have little adverse impact on unscrupulous employers who may seek to take advantage of a less effective HSE."

Tasker said it was "unacceptable" for workers to be put at risk in this way. Their health and safety had been "compromised by a government that starves the HSE of adequate funding and continues to promote a wide-reaching and extremely concerning deregulation agenda," he said.

Details of the proposed cuts were revealed in a leaked memo to staff from HSE chief executive Geoffrey Podger. "We do have to do some belt-tightening to keep our finances in order," he said. "This will inevitably involve some difficult decisions and unwelcome consequences."

As well as cutting between 250 and 350 posts by 2008, £3m would be cut from publicity spending and £2.3m from workplace health and science budgets. "We also need to look at all our budgets to provide greater assurance that we are actually spending in a responsible way reflecting our business priorities," stated the memo, dated August 10, 2006.

After 2008, the HSE is likely to face further cutbacks because of a plan by the Treasury to slash government spending. The Department for Work and Pensions, which sponsors the HSE, has been told to reduce its budget by 5% a year between 2008 and 2011.

Rory O'Neill, editor of the trade union-sponsored Hazards magazine, warned that the outlook for HSE was bleak. "An austerity programme has left it haemorrhaging staff, mothballing work programmes and shutting offices," he told the Sunday Herald.

"HSE now has too few inspectors, admin staff, doctors and nurses to protect the workforce, and faces the loss of further staff even before anticipated government efficiency' cuts bite."

O'Neill pointed out that inspections, investigations, improvement notices and prosecutions by the HSE had all fallen. "Provisional figures show fatalities heading for a five-year high, with construction deaths up by 32% on last year," he said.

He was backed by Andrew Watterson, professor of environmental health at Stirling University. "The HSE has been run down over many years, and additional cuts and job losses will place even more vulnerable employees at greater risk."

The HSE confirmed it had to cut spending and shed jobs.

It said its financial strategy for 2005 to 2008 was to spend strongly in 2005-06 and then scale back in the remaining two years. But, according to an HSE response to a request under freedom of information legislation, there were also "forecasting difficulties and some unexpected increase in costs".

The HSE expects to achieve the cutbacks without compulsory redundancies, a spokeswoman said. The number of operational inspectors in post during 2006-07 has remained stable, she added.