Health & Safety Risk Assessment
What is a health and safety risk assessment?
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations states that an employer must take reasonable steps ‘for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures.’ So even if the task of risk management is delegated, it is ultimately the responsibility of the management within any business to ensure it is effectively completed.
Within our areas of responsibility, we all have a legal duty to ensure that we protect persons who may be affected or harmed by our work activities. This extends to employees, contractors, visitors, residents, neighbours, i.e., all persons.
Risk assessment is the process of systematically identifying hazards present within the work activities and workplace environments for which you are responsible. Having identified foreseeable hazards present, you then have a legal duty to take reasonable control measures to remove or reduce the hazards present.
The process requires the involvement of those likely to be exposed to the work activities so that a practical review of any existing precautions can be made with the view of identifying if current practices are adequate or if more needs to be done to prevent harm.
While the law does not require you to eliminate all risks, it does require you to ensure that people are protected so far as is ‘reasonably practicable. Therefore, it obviously makes sense to risk assess and eliminate as many potential hazards as possible and reduce the likelihood of accidents occurring.
Risk assessments are important because they help you to:
- Spot hazards
- Think about the potential harm
- Identify people who may be at risk or affected by your activities
- Protect the people at risk
- Plan the work safely
- Review existing controls
- Make improvements
- Comply with the law
What are the benefits?
While undertaking risk assessments assist with legal compliance, there are also many other benefits, not just the resulting safer working environments but likely reduction in incident and accident rates. There are also the costs associated with not having the correct processes and procedures in place. Allied with that, the business could also face loss in production time, damage to their
brand, reputation and potential fines.
How can Ligtas support you?
Ligtas undertake risk assessments across all industry sectors, from engineering, office, managed properties and retail environments. The assessments are compliant with the legal standards required. Our assessment processes include:
- A physical inspection of the premises
- Examination of site safety documentation
- Our extended team of assessors are highly qualified with in-depth knowledge
- A full assessment report with photographs will be produced, including
- Our ethos is to become part of an extension of your in-house teams, to work
Read our case study - Expert Health and Safety support and advice
