Have you appointed a Health & Safety competent person?
The Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires every employer to appoint one or more competent persons to assist them in undertaking the measures needed to comply with statutory health and safety provisions.
More and more employers are ‘linking’ to an external specialist for health & safety support, as they are finding this the most cost-effective and timely solution.
If you have not appointed a competent person, you should do so now. Your company needs to implement arrangements for health & safety, including effective planning, organisation control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures, taking account of the nature of activities and the size of the undertaking. If your company has five or more employees, these arrangements need to be recorded.
Employers also need to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of (a) the risks to health & safety to which employees are exposed whilst at work; and (b) the risks to the health & safety of persons not in their employment arising out of, or in connection with, their work.
The HSE has recognised the burden this can place on companies and suggests in their summary of the main changes arising from the 1999 regulations, that “employers who do not have sufficient competence themselves should look to appoint one or more of their employees who have the necessary means to provide health & safety assistance. If there are no (or an insufficient number of) relevant competent employees in the organisation, or their level of competence is insufficient to assist the employer in complying with health & safety law, the employer should enlist an external service or person. In some circumstances a combination of internal and external competent assistance might be appropriate”.
JPD with NQA offer a wide variety of courses and services to help you with all your Health & Safety needs, for more information visit our website www.jpd.co.uk or call one of our training advisors on 0870 438 2573.