The health and safety competent person: who can be yours

What the law requires

Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 is headed "Health and safety assistance". It says every employer must appoint one or more competent persons to assist in undertaking the measures needed to comply with health and safety law.

The same regulation adds three conditions that are easy to overlook:

• Enough people, time and means. The number of people appointed, the time they have and the means at their disposal must be adequate for the size of the business and the risks in it. Naming someone who has no hours to give does not meet the duty.
• Co-operation. If you appoint more than one person, you must arrange for them to work together.
• Information. Anyone you appoint from outside must be told what you know about the factors affecting health and safety in your business.

There is no size threshold. The duty applies whether you employ two people or two hundred.

What "competent" means

The regulation defines it in one sentence. A person is competent where they have "sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities" to enable them properly to assist with what you need to do.

Notice what is not in that sentence: no named qualification, no certificate, no membership. HSE's guidance says a competent person should have the skills, knowledge and experience to recognise hazards in your business and help you put sensible controls in place. It also says formal qualifications are not usually essential and that the law does not require formal training, although it can help.

Competence is relative to the work. HSE's guidance is that the level needed is proportionate to the job and the place: you would not need the same health and safety competence in an office as on a construction site. The person looking after safety for a firm of accountants needs to understand display screens, fire, slips and stress. The person doing it for a roofing contractor needs to understand work at height, fragile surfaces, asbestos and scaffolding, and to know where their own knowledge runs out.

Who you can appoint

HSE's guidance lists three options and says you can use one or a combination:

• Yourself. HSE says that managing health and safety is usually not complicated and that you can do it yourself with the help of your workers, because you know your workplace and its risks best.
• One or more of your workers. A site manager, a workshop foreman, an office manager. Someone who knows the work, is listened to, and is given time to do it.
• Someone from outside the business. A consultant or adviser.

If you are a sole trader who employs people, or a partner in a partnership, the regulation says you do not need to appoint anyone else where you, or at least one partner, have sufficient training and experience or knowledge to do it yourselves.

The regulations do not ask for a letter of appointment. With five or more employees your health and safety arrangements must be recorded, and the natural place to name your competent person is the responsibilities section of your health and safety policy. You must also consult your employees about the arrangements for appointing them.

Why the law prefers someone you employ

Paragraph 8 of regulation 7 says that where there is a competent person in your employment, that person "shall be appointed" in preference to a competent person who is not. HSE repeats it: if there is a competent person within your workforce, use them and not someone from outside.

The reasoning is practical. Someone who is in the building every day sees the blocked fire exit, hears about the near miss and knows which machine guard keeps being taken off. A consultant who visits twice a year sees what is put in front of them.

The preference does not stop you using outside help. It means outside help should fill gaps in what your own people know, not stand in for having anyone inside the business who takes an interest.

Building competence in-house

If nobody in the firm feels equal to it yet, that can be fixed, and for a lower-risk business it is not a long road.

1. Start with HSE's free guidance. Its pages for small businesses cover policy, risk assessment, training, first aid and reporting in plain terms. Our guide to health and safety for small businesses puts the duties in order.
2. Send the person on a course. Training providers offer health and safety courses for managers and supervisors, certificated by bodies such as IOSH and NEBOSH. None is required by law. A good one gives a non-specialist the vocabulary and the method.
3. Give them time. Half a day a week that is theirs for safety work is worth more than a qualification with no hours attached.
4. Buy in the specialist parts. An in-house competent person with a consultant on call for the technical questions is a common arrangement, and it is the one the regulation points towards.

When to bring in a consultant

HSE's guidance is that you may need help from outside if your business is large, complex or high risk, or does not have the competence to manage health and safety in-house. In a small firm the usual reasons are:

• the work carries serious risks, such as work at height, lifting operations, hazardous substances or confined spaces, and nobody inside has been trained to assess them
• a customer or an accreditation scheme asks for something you have not produced before
• you need a specialist measurement or survey, such as noise, dust or asbestos
• you have had a serious accident or a visit from an inspector and want an outside view
• you are setting up from nothing and want it done properly once, so that you can run it yourselves afterwards

That last case is worth dwelling on. HSE says a consultant should help you to manage health and safety better for yourself. If a single visit and a handover are what you need, HSE's advice is to say so at the outset, so that you are not tied to a long contract.

How to choose a health and safety consultant

The starting point HSE recommends is the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register, OSHCR. HSE describes it as a register of consultants who can advise UK businesses on managing health and safety risks, and supports it as a way of finding consultants who are certified professionals with a status recognised by their professional body, hold valid insurance and keep up to date. HSE's page on finding a consultant links to it.

Being on a register is where the checking starts. HSE's guidance on getting the right help gives you the questions to ask:

• Do they have evidence of relevant training and knowledge? Qualifications, or practical experience of advising in your industry.
• Are they adequately insured?
• Will they visit? HSE points out that generic advice often fails to identify the key risks, and that it is hard to identify risks without seeing the workplace.
• Do they know your kind of work? Advice should be based on experience of your industry and processes.
• Is the advice practical? It should concentrate on the significant risks, recommend controls that are reasonably practicable, and not generate paperwork for the sake of it.
• Will they hand over properly? You should be left understanding the key risks and the controls they recommend.

Before you sign anything, write down what you want done and ask them to confirm what they will do and by when. If what comes back does not look like a practical, sensible answer to your problem, HSE's advice is to ask for an explanation and whether there is a simpler alternative.

What remains your responsibility

Everything. HSE is plain about it: as the employer, managing health and safety is still your legal duty, even if you use someone from outside your business. The competent person assists. The duties in the Health and Safety at Work Act stay with the employer.

In practice that leaves you with five jobs that cannot be handed over:

• choosing someone who is competent for the risks you have
• giving them the time, information and authority to do the work
• reading what they tell you
• acting on it, or recording why you decided not to
• checking, from time to time, that what is written down is what happens

A folder of risk assessments written by a consultant and never opened protects nobody. An inspector will ask the supervisor on site what the controls are, not the person who wrote the document.

Keeping it in SafetyPro360

SafetyPro360 gives whoever looks after health and safety one place to work from. When they log in, the dashboard lists what needs attention: overdue actions, expired or missing training, documents past their review or expiry date. An activity log shows who changed what. If more than one person needs to log in, the Pro and Business plans allow more logins. If you use an outside consultant, you can give them access to chosen parts of the account and chosen sites, and end that access at any time. There is more on that for safety consultants.

Questions people ask