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Several current pieces of current health and safety legislation require employers and the self-employed to assess the risks created by their business enabling them to identify the measures they need to have in place to comply with the law including:
This duty is the responsibility of employers and the self-employed except for the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 where self-employed persons do not have to carry out an analysis of workstations. However under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 self-employed persons still have to satisfy themselves that they are not at risk when working with display screens. However if you feel you are not competent to do the assessment you can get help from a competent source and staff should be consulted in the process along with any employee representative. Employees and their representatives know first hand what the risks in the workplace are and will often be able to offer practical solutions to controlling them.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations require you to assess risks to the health and safety of persons affected by the work activities-yourself, employees and members of the public. However you need to check the other regulations for specific duties that are placed on the employer, or allowed exemptions.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations require employers to examine what in the workplace could cause harm to people so that you can weigh up whether you have taken sufficient precautions or need to do more to meet what the law requires you to do. Risk assessments carried out under each specific regulation will give more detail on what needs to be addressed.
All risk assessments must be either ‘adequate’ or ‘suitable and sufficient’ and mean that your assessments need not be too overcomplicated. You will have to judge whether the hazards being assessed are significant and whether you have them covered by satisfactory precautions so that the risks are small.
Practically risks should be assessed before you begin any new work.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations and some other regulations require employers to record the significant findings of your assessment where there are five or more employees. Other legislation e.g. the Noise at Work Regulations and Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations require you to keep a record of every assessment even if the business has less than five employees.
All of the regulations require that the risk assessments are reviewed and revised where you suspect the assessment is no longer valid or there has been some significant change, and others such as the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations require a regular review.
You can contact our Food/Health and Safety Office (see our details on our main Food/Health and Safety page) or visit the website of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Our links page has a link to their web site. The helpful publication "An introduction to health and safety" INDG259 produced by the HSE may be downloaded here. (pdf document 414 KB)
Another source of assistance is the Department of Trade and Industry website (www.dti.gov.uk/publications) from which the useful free publication, "Health and Safety: a no-nonsense summary of government rules and regulations" can be ordered. The publication has the URN reference 05/545. Our links page has a link to the publications page. Once there access the search function and on the next page insert the URN in the search window.
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