Health and Safety Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is a legal requirement and forms the cornerstone for the management of all health and safety within your business. If you have five or more employees, then you must also maintain records of this in your company documents.
Risk assessment is a common requirement running through almost all health and safety legislation and should be at the heart of all health and safety management systems. Identifying the risks, or risk profiling, in your business enables you to effectively manage these. It is through the assessment of identified risks that you can be confident that they are being managed well, and that liability or the likely realisation of hazards, is mitigated. The law does not expect you to eliminate all risk, but you are required to protect people as far as ‘reasonably practicable’.
A risk assessment is a careful examination of what could cause harm to people in your workplace, so that you can determine whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent the risk of harm. Workers and others have a legal right to be protected from harm caused by a failure to take reasonable control measures against the hazards arising from your work activities.
The law states that a risk assessment must be suitable and sufficient for the risks involved. The level of detail should be proportionate to the risks of the industry and individual workplace.
Insignificant and unforeseeable risks can be ignored, but every risk assessment should show that:
- A thorough check was conducted
- Those who might be affected by the potential risks were identified
- Obvious significant risks are controlled, considering the number of people who could be involved
- Reasonable precautions are in place, and the remaining risk is low as is ‘reasonably practicable’
- Your workers or their representatives were involved in the process wherever possible
- Working with you to establish a risk assessment register or inventory for your business
- Putting together risk assessments on your behalf, and by working with you, fine-tune them to be relevant and reflective of your operations
- Conduct reviews of existing risk assessments,
- Training your appointed risk assessors in good risk assessment practice
- Annual review of risk assessments for retained clients
- New and Expectant Mothers Risk Assessment
- Display Screen Workstation Risk Assessment
- COSHH Risk Assessment
- Fire Risk Assessment
- Manual Handling Risk Assessment
- Work Equipment Risk Assessment
- Young Person Risk Assessment