The effectiveness of a Mines Inspectorate will be substantially dependent on a variety of practical matters: where and how it chooses to deploy its scarce resources; how it seeks to maintain its independence and avoid capture by various stakeholders; how it interacts with trade unions and worker representatives and seeks to harness their capacities; how it maintains its skills base and how it ensures that it has the capacity to discharge increasingly sophisticated regulatory tasks.
This working paper addresses these practical issues as a necessary precursor two following working papers that examine how the inspectorate engages with its core tasks of inspection and enforcement.