Basics for Compliance with H&S Legislations

As an employer, you must appoint a competent person or people to help you meet your health and safety legal duties.

They should have the skills, knowledge and experience to be able to recognise hazards in your business and help you put sensible controls in place to protect workers and others from harm.

The legal requirement to write a policy is included in the Health and Safety at Work etc Act. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations explain the steps you must take to manage health and safety.

You must have:

• a suitably stocked first aid kit
• an appointed person or people to take charge of first aid arrangements
• information for all employees telling them about first aid arrangements

Assess your first aid needs

Appoint someone to take charge of first aid

What to put in a first aid kit

First aiders and training

First aid for homeworkers and co-working spaces

First aid in detail

If you employ anyone, you must either:

• display the health and safety law poster where your workers can easily read it
• provide each worker with the equivalent health and safety law leaflet

As an employer, you’re required by law to protect your employees, and others, from harm.

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the minimum you must do is:

• identify what could cause injury or illness in your business (hazards) 
• decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how seriously (the risk)
• take action to eliminate the hazard, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk

You must consult all your employees on health and safety. You can do this by listening and talking to them about:

• health and safety and the work they do
• how risks are controlled
• the best ways of providing information and training

Consultation is a two-way process, allowing employees to raise concerns and influence decisions on managing health and safety.

You can buy employers’ liability insurance through insurers or intermediaries like brokers or trade associations. You may find that it often comes as part of an insurance package designed to cover a range of business needs.

Your policy must be with an authorised insurer and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has a list of these. You can check their register on the FCA website.