General Health and Safety

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 applies to all work activities and premises. Everyone at work has responsibilities under it, including the self-employed.

H&B Safety Consultancy can help you understand what your responsibilities are and translate that into actionable steps.

By evaluating your current position and determining what you already have in place across policy and procedure, we can:

• identify any areas that need addressing
• devise a unique set of solutions that directly address your requirements
• provide an understandable and actionable implementation plan

This approach allows you to confidently ensure you are not only protecting the health and safety of your workforce, but you are minising the risk to you and your company from legal non-compliance prosecution.

Once the initial assessment and implementation has taken place, H&B Safety Consultancy can provide ongoing support and advice to ensure that you continue to remain compliant as your business grows and legislation changes.  For further information please see our Monitoring, Review & Consultation section.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 under Reg (7) requires each employer to appoint one or more competent persons to assist in health and safety management.

If this expertise in not available to you in-house, H&B Safety Consultancy can provide a cost effective solution.  Through our Competent Person Service, we can provide the expert help and advice of this role when needed, along with an appointed ‘competent person’ name for your health and safety documentation/tender. Fulfilling this role on a retained basis through H&B Safety Consultancy can make great financial sense, ensuring the right support is available to you when you need it, without the expense of a permanent employee.

If you already have an in house Competent Person, H&B Safety Consultancy have a wealth of experience which can assist them in the effective delivery of their role. We can asssist them with independent guidance on specialist areas or provide support to develop your health and safety team or policies.

A health and safety policy sets out your general approach to health and safety. It explains how you, as an employer, will manage health and safety in your business.

Whether you are drafting your first policy or need to review your existing one, H&B Safety Consultancy can help you ensure that yours is fit for purpose. Our consultant will guide you step-by-step to ensure that the following core elements are captured and detailed:

• a statement of intent, representing your commitment to your duties as an employer
• a defined management structure and responsibilities section to enable ownership of health and safety duties within your organisation
• a selection of arrangements, detailing how you and your organisation will control risk

Our consultant will meet with you to capture business activity and process and from this will create your bespoke health and safety policy ready for implementation into your business.

Could you evidence, in a court of law if necessary, how your organisation manages risk; monitors and controls the actions of its employees and any contractors in its day to day operations? Besides the legal obligations, your organisation may also wish to keep records for financial, ethical and moral reasons or for general business consideration.

H&B Safety Consultancy can help you create a Health & Safety Management System, designed to work within your business, ensuring that records are accurately maintained and stored.  Our consultant will take time to understand your business requirements and ways of working to create a bespoke template documentation folder.  This can be used to help you plan, manage and monitor the health and safety systems active within your workplace.

Once completed, H&B Safety Consultancy can support you with your use and implementation of your Health and Safety Management Folder  as much or as little as necessary.

A Health and Safety Management Folder may also be required for:

• specific project or phase of work
• tender submissions
• pre-qualification questionnaires
• approved supplier list applications
• membership status with a recognised industry body

A key legal requirement of managing the health and safety of your business is the need to control risks in your workplace.  To do this you need to think about what might cause harm to ‘people’ and decide whether you are taking reasonable steps to prevent that harm.

H&B Safety Consultancy can help you identify the hazards applicable to your business, carry out risk assessment on your behalf and identify sensible measures to control the risks. We will provide you with written assessments to allow you to communicate them to your staff.

Our risk assessment service includes:

• General risk assessment
• Fire Risk Assessment
• COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) Assessment
• Manual Handling Assessment
• Hand Arm Vibration Assessment (HAVS)
• Noise Assessment

Once we have carried out a risk assessment, H&B Safety Consultancy can compile a documented safe system of work, for use in training your staff.

Employers have a legal duty to report certain categories of work-related accidents, incidents or ill health to the HSE (Health and Safety Executive).

H&B Safety Consultancy can assist you to implement a robust recording and documentation process which enables you to effectively and efficiently record and report any such incidents in your workplace. We will also ensure that any implemented procedure meet your legal compliance requirements.

The implemented procedure will ensure that you manage your risk effectively by enabling you to:

• identify why your existing control measures failed and what improvements or additional measures are needed
• plan to prevent the incident from happening again
• point to areas where your risk assessment needs reviewing
• improve risk control in your workplace in the future

Additionally, H&B Safety Consultancy can provide a full review and investigation report to establish the root cause of any accident/incident which has occurred, giving you an insight into how it can be prevented from happening again.

Employers have a legal obligation to check, confirm and record that employees have sufficient training, skills, experience and knowledge to enable them to competently perform their task safely and without undue risk to their health.

H&B Safety Consultancy can work with you to:

• decide what level of information, instruction and training you need to provide to your workforce
• devise a matrix system to record this information
• identify any skill/knowledge gaps and provide recommendations to address shortfalls

Whilst there may be key requirements for specialist industry training and work activities, don’t forget that there is also the need to communicate health and safety policy, company expectations & standards to your employees.  In addition, any subcontractors or visitors to your workplace need to be made aware of key health and safety issues affecting their involvement with your company/premises.  H&B Safety Consultancy can help you devise comprehensive and relevant material, to ensure that these messages are communicated effectively and appropriately.

Your business is constantly changing, and so is the legislation which governs its Health and Safety obligations, so it’s important that you continue to monitor your compliance.  Just because it’s right today doesn’t mean that it’s right tomorrow!

H&B Safety Consultancy can help you stay compliant by providing a specialist audit service, tailored to your individual needs. Through the monitor and review of your implemented procedures we can:

• ensure that your policies are effective, valid and relevant
• devise template documents for your own in-house purposes
• independently inspect your projects/workplaces on your behalf
• consult with your workforce for their valuable input
• provide a written report and action plan with key recommendations and guidance on how to implement any changes required

Occupational health is a specialist branch of medicine that focuses on the physical and mental wellbeing of employees in the workplace.

The aim of occupational health is to prevent work-related illness and injury by:

• encouraging safe working practices
• ergonomics (studying how you work and how you could work better)
• monitoring the health of the workforce
• supporting the management of sickness absence

Some industries have a requirement for health surveillance by law, to ensure the continued ‘fitness to work’ of employees. This may apply if workers are exposed to noise or vibration, solvents, fumes, dusts, biological agents and other substances hazardous to health, or work in compressed air.

Through initial assessment, H&B Safety Consultancy can help you identify whether occupational support is required and then place you with the appropriate person to ensure preventative/corrective actions can be taken.

We can facilitate the appointment of Occupational Health Practitioners to support and advise you either by visiting your workplace or by arranging an appointment for you to attend their premises

Services include:

• Health Screening
• Medicals (Specialist & Driver)
• Audiometry Screening
• Occupational Vaccines
• Physiotherapy
• Mental Health & Wellbeing support
• Alcohol & Drugs testing