Inspection of enterprises

The control measures of the Danish Working Environment Authority (WEA)

The WEA supervises whether Acts and rules in the field of safety and health at work are observed, among others through inspection visits and guidance of the enterprises and their safety organisations. The aim is to make the enterprises capable of solving their issues in relation to health and safety at the workplace.

The different forms of sanctions of the WEA, i.e. improvement notices, legal charges and administrative fines will depend on both the enterprise’s actual working environment standards and on its own efforts.

As an executive authority, the WEA focuses in particular on enterprises with poor safety and health conditions and no serious policy in relation to working environment issues. 

Checking your health and safety conditions

At an inspection by the WEA we check compliance with the Danish health and safety regulation. It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure compliance with the health and safety regulation.

The WEA’s inspectors are, on production of proper identification, entitled to have free access to public and private workplaces to the extent required to enable them to execute their duties.

It is an unannounced visit where we check your enterprise by walking around to assess whether your health and safety conditions are in order. We look at conditions such as the enterprise’s own health and safety performance and ergonomics, noise and the risk of accidents, etc.

Use of interpreters

The WEA can call an interpreter, if necessary. The interpreter will interpret over the telephone during the actual visit.

Interpretation is provided free of charge for your enterprise.

Violation of the health and safety legislation

If your enterprise fails to comply with the health and safety legislation, The WEA can order you to get the conditions in order immediately or within a deadline. We can also decide to issue a 'notice of violation' where we find that there has been a violation of the working environment legislation, but where there is nothing to order because the conditions have been put in order before the time of the decision. In more serious cases we can report your enterprise to the police and you may have to pay fines.

Agreement to problem-solve

The WEA can offer enterprises a voluntary agreement to problem-solve, if we find a health and safety problem that is relevant to more workplaces in the enterprise, or if we suspect a complex health and safety problem. The agreement to problem-solve provides enterprises with the opportunity to make an effort regarding their working environment by solving a health and safety problem, and getting help with this from the WEA.

When making an agreement to problem-solve on wholesome problems, the enterprise agrees to develop a solution to the problem in more of the workplaces where it is relevant, and in return WEA will not issue a notice on the problem. When making an agreement to problem-solve on complex problems, the enterprise agrees to develop a solution to the problem that is found, and in return the WEA will stop investigating the complex problem. We do not offer solution deals for problems that need to be solved immediately.

Additional guidance

The Danish Working Environment Authority (WEA) may offer additional guidance to enterprises, if they have been issued an improvement notice on a health and safety problem (immediate or with time limit). The enterprise can then choose if it want to receive the additional guidance. Receiving (or not receiving) the additional guidance has no legal implications for the enterprise nor the acceptance or rejection of their solution to the health and safety problem of the improvement notice.

Offer of additional guidance