The list looks enormous and the working set is small. One act carries the duties, one set of regulations tells you to assess and arrange, six more cover the everyday workplace, and after that you only meet a regulation when you have the hazard it is about. What follows is that working set, with the parts a small employer actually has to do written out rather than cited.
The act, and the two duties everything else hangs from
The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 is the frame, and two sections do most of the work. Section 2 is the duty to your employees: safe plant and systems of work, safe handling and storage, information, instruction, training and supervision, a safe place of work with safe access and egress, and a safe working environment with adequate welfare. Section 3 is the duty to everybody else affected by what you do, which is where tenants, visitors, contractors' staff, the public and a passer by sit, and it is the section under which most prosecutions of landlords, agents and contractors are actually brought. Both are qualified by so far as is reasonably practicable, which means weighing the risk against the cost of controlling it, and the weighing has to be done rather than assumed.
The regulations a small business is actually caught by
The management regulations come first: assess the risks, make arrangements for planning, organising, controlling, monitoring and reviewing, appoint one or more competent persons, and give employees information and training. Then six that apply to almost every workplace: the workplace regulations covering temperature, lighting, ventilation, cleanliness, welfare and traffic routes; the work equipment regulations; manual handling; personal protective equipment; display screen equipment for habitual users; and first aid. After that it is hazard by hazard, and you only meet the ones you have: substances, asbestos, work at height, noise, vibration, lifting equipment, confined spaces, electricity, fire, construction and gas. The practical consequence is that a small employer's compliance is a short folder rather than a library: a policy, an assessment per activity, training records, and the two or three hazard specific assessments their trade actually generates.
What is OHS, and why the term is rare in UK law
OHS stands for occupational health and safety and it is a management term rather than a legal one here. British law says health and safety at work, and no UK regulation uses the abbreviation, so a search for OHS legislation returns international material and standards rather than the duties that bind you. Where the term is genuinely used is management systems, particularly the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems, which large clients sometimes ask suppliers to certify to. That standard is voluntary and is not the law: certifying to it does not discharge a single statutory duty, and a business with no certificate and a good assessment is compliant while a certified one with a stale assessment is not. If a tender asks for an OHS policy, what it wants is your health and safety policy.
What is RIDDOR in health and safety, and what has to be reported
RIDDOR is the reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations, and it turns certain events into a legal report to the regulator rather than a note in a book. The reportable set is narrower than people think and the categories are specific: any death; specified injuries, which include most fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes, amputations, permanent loss of sight or a penetrating eye injury, crushing or burns to a significant proportion of the body, scalping requiring treatment, loss of consciousness from head injury or asphyxia, and anything from work in an enclosed space needing resuscitation or a hospital admission; an injury keeping a worker off their normal work for more than seven days, reported within fifteen days; certain occupational diseases diagnosed in writing; a list of dangerous occurrences with no injury at all, such as a collapse, an explosion or an electrical short causing fire; and injuries to members of the public taken to hospital. Separately, an over three day absence is recorded rather than reported, which is what the accident book is for.
Employers responsibilities for health and safety, in six duties
Six things cover it for a small employer. Assess the risks of what you do and record the significant findings once you have five or more employees. Write a health and safety policy, which is required in writing at the same threshold. Provide what the assessment says is needed: equipment, protection, training, supervision and welfare. Consult employees, either directly or through a representative, which is a duty rather than good manners. Report what RIDDOR requires and keep the accident book for the rest. And hold employers liability insurance and display the certificate, along with the law poster or the equivalent leaflet. Nothing in that list needs a consultant, and all of it is asked for on the first page of any client's supplier questionnaire.
Health and safety file contents, and which projects owe one
The file is a construction document, not a workplace one, and it is owed on any project with more than one contractor. The principal designer compiles it and hands it to the client at the end, and the client keeps it available for anybody who works on the structure later. What goes in it is information about the structure that somebody maintaining, altering, cleaning or demolishing it would need and could not reasonably find out for themselves: a brief description of the work done, the key structural principles and any safe working loads, hazardous materials left in place, the location of services, information on the removal or dismantling of installed plant, and access arrangements for cleaning and maintenance including any fixings for fall protection. What does not go in it is the construction phase plan, the risk assessments or the contract paperwork, which is the commonest way a file turns into a box nobody reads.
Safety culture examples that are measurable rather than posters
Culture is what happens when nobody is watching, so the useful examples are the ones that produce a number. Near miss reports per month, which should RISE when culture improves rather than fall. The proportion of actions from assessments and inspections closed by their due date. Toolbox talks delivered against planned. Inspections completed by the supervisor rather than by the safety adviser. The time between a defect being reported and a piece of equipment being taken out of service. Whether anybody has stopped a job in the last quarter, and what happened to them afterwards, which is the single most diagnostic question in this list. Against those, the posters, the slogans and the award on the wall are not examples of anything, and a business with a rising near miss count and falling accident count is doing better than one reporting nothing at all.
Legislation relating to health and safety in specific sectors
Beyond the general set, several trades are governed by their own regimes and it is worth knowing which reaches you. Construction has the CDM regulations, which apply to domestic work as well as commercial. Food businesses have the hygiene regulations with their HACCP requirement, enforced by the local authority rather than the safety regulator. Gas work sits under the gas safety regulations and requires a registered engineer by law. Electrical work in dwellings is caught by the building regulations for notification. Care settings have the care regulator's requirements running alongside health and safety law. Licensed premises have their licence conditions, and a shared house has its HMO licence conditions, both of which import safety obligations by the back door. The pattern is that sector rules add to the general duties and never replace them, which is why a good HACCP plan is no answer to a question about work equipment.
Health and safety in childcare settings, and who inspects a nursery
A nursery sits under two regimes at once and they ask different questions. The childcare regulator inspects against the early years framework, which covers safeguarding, suitability of people, premises and equipment, and requires its own risk assessments and records. Health and safety law applies on top of it as it does to any employer, and is enforced by the local authority's environmental health officers. What that means in practice is one set of documents that has to satisfy both: a general workplace assessment covering the premises, plus the named assessments the hazards demand, which in a nursery are substances for the cleaning store and the nappy area, manual handling for lifting children and equipment, food hygiene if food is prepared, hot water and surface temperatures, outdoor play equipment and its surfacing, and a fire risk assessment with arrangements for evacuating children who cannot walk. The two failures inspectors find most often are a fire evacuation plan that assumes adult mobility and a cleaning cupboard with no lock and no assessment.
Health and safety breaches, and what actually happens next
Enforcement is a ladder and most of it never reaches a court. An inspector who finds a problem can give verbal or written advice, which is where the majority of visits end. Above that is an improvement notice, requiring a remedy within a stated period, and a prohibition notice, which stops the activity immediately and does not wait for an appeal. Both are public on the regulator's register, which is what a client's supplier questionnaire looks at. Then there is the fee for intervention, an hourly charge for the inspector's time where a material breach is found, which surprises businesses who thought advice was free. Prosecution is the top of the ladder, in the magistrates or the Crown Court, with unlimited fines for organisations and, for individuals, fines and in serious cases imprisonment, and sentencing is by a guideline that scales the fine to turnover and culpability. The practical lesson is that the cheap end of the ladder is where the outcome is decided: a documented assessment and a fixed defect at the advice stage is a different business from one arguing about culpability later.
Questions people ask about H&S legislation
Do the duties change under five employees?
Two things change and the rest do not. Below five employees you do not have to record the significant findings of your risk assessments, and you do not have to have a written health and safety policy. Everything else applies in full: the assessment itself, the arrangements, the training, the consultation, RIDDOR, insurance. Most very small businesses write both down anyway, because a client asks for the policy before they ask for anything else.
Who counts as a competent person?
Somebody with the training, knowledge and experience to help you meet your duties, which for a low risk business is often the owner after some training, and for a higher risk one is somebody qualified. The regulations require you to appoint one or more, and they expect preference to be given to somebody inside the business over an external consultant, which is the opposite of how the market sells it. An external adviser is entirely legitimate; what cannot be outsourced is the duty.
Is health and safety law different in Scotland or Wales?
The core is not: health and safety at work is reserved, so the act, the management regulations and the hazard specific regulations apply across Great Britain. What differs is the surrounding law that carries safety obligations: building standards, housing and private renting, fire safety and licensing are devolved, so the fire regime, the rented sector duties and the building regulations are genuinely different in Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own health and safety order mirroring the act.