Lone working means working without close or direct supervision, and it is far more common than the phrase suggests: a cleaner in an empty building, an engineer at a remote site, a care worker on a home visit, a driver, a shopkeeper on a late shift, and anyone working from home. No regulation prohibits it. The duty is the ordinary one, to assess the risk and control it, with the complication that the usual control of having somebody else nearby has been removed.
What the assessment has to deal with
Whether the workplace itself creates a special risk for one person. Whether the work involves plant, substances or tasks that need more than one person. Violence from members of the public or from people in a household. Whether the person has a medical condition that makes lone working unsuitable. How the person raises an alarm and how long it would take help to arrive. And what happens if they do not check in.
Where lone working cannot be permitted
Some work is prohibited alone: entry into a confined space needs a top man and rescue arrangements, live electrical work above certain thresholds, and any task where the safe system itself depends on a second person. A risk assessment that permits lone working in those cases has been written round the resourcing rather than round the risk.
Monitoring that is proportionate
The range runs from a scheduled call at the end of a visit, to a buddy system, to an app with timed check-ins and escalation, to a dedicated lone worker device with a duress alarm connected to an alarm receiving centre. The right level follows the assessment. What matters more than the technology is that somebody is actually watching for the missed check-in and knows what to do about it, because an unanswered alert is the same as no system at all.
Violence and aggression, which is usually the real risk
For most lone workers the risk is not machinery, it is people. Controls that work are pre-visit information about the address and the history, a policy that supports withdrawal without the worker having to justify it afterwards, vehicle and parking arrangements that avoid isolation, and reporting of every incident including verbal abuse. The last one is where the data comes from, and it only appears if reporting it is easy and consequence-free.
Questions people ask about lone worker risk assessment
Is lone working illegal?
No. There is no general prohibition. The employer must assess the risks of working alone and put controls in place, and some specific tasks cannot lawfully be done alone.
What is the definition of lone working?
Working without close or direct supervision. It covers work in isolated places, work away from a fixed base, and working outside normal hours in an otherwise occupied building.
Do lone workers need a device?
Only where the assessment shows that is the proportionate control. For many roles a scheduled check-in with a named person and a clear escalation procedure is sufficient.
Can someone enter a confined space alone?
No. The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 require suitable and sufficient rescue arrangements before entry, which cannot be satisfied by a person working alone.