Revised Guidance to Simplify Risk Assessments
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has issued a revised risk assessment guide to help employers to spend more time on putting practical actions into effect.
Launching the guidance, HSE’s Deputy Chief Executive, Jonathan Rees, said: “We want to save lives, not tie businesses up in red tape – good risk assessment is the way to achieve this. Risk assessment is at the heart of sensible health and safety. We believe it should be a practical way of protecting people from real harm and suffering, not a bureaucratic back-covering exercise. On its own paperwork never saved a life, it needs to be a means to an end, resulting in actions that protect people in practice.”
The guidance Five Steps to Risk Assessment, which was first published in 1993, has been revised and simplified to make it even easier for normal business people, not just health and safety experts, to use. It also places greater emphasis on making sure that decisions are actually put into practice.
The 11-page booklet is available free online at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/index.htm , and provides advice and tips on five key elements to an effective risk assessment: identifying the hazards; deciding who might be harmed and how; evaluating the risks and deciding on precautions; recording findings and implementing them; and finally ensuring they are reviewed at regular intervals.
Source: www.hse.gov.uk (accessed 04/08/06)
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