Health and Safety in Small Businesses

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Net Lawman can help you to look after your business by showing you how to take some simple steps to get the health and safety issues taken care of in your business. In this and related pages on our website you will find assistance for new businesses and for existing businesses.

An Introduction to Health and Safety

Health and safety is about preventing people from being harmed by work or becoming ill through work. This is so important that the law says we must not put ourselves, other workers, or the public, in danger.

Health and safety law applies to all businesses large and small. It covers employees, full - or part-time, temporary or permanent; the self-employed; young people doing work experience; apprentices; charity workers; mobile workers and home workers. If you hire temporary workers or casual workers from agencies, you have responsibilities too.

Controlling danger at workis no different from any other task. You need to recognise problems, know enough about them, decide what to do and act on the solutions.

It is not just highly unusual or exceptional circumstances that cause accidents or ill health. Some basic thinking and acting beforehand could usually prevent them.

Health and safety does not have to be expensive, time consuming or complicated.

New Businesses:

If your business is new, we at Net Lawman advise you to take the following measures urgently. Here are some very important things which you must do;
Risk Assessment: Decide what could cause harm to people and how to take precautions;
HSE Policy: Decide how you are going to manage health and safety in your business. If you have 5 or more employees you need to write this down. Net Lawman can help you by providing standard HSE Manuals that can be altered by you to suit your business OR we can even draw bespoke HSE Policies for your specific business;
Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance: If you employ anyone you need Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance and you must display the certificate in your workplace;
Health and Safety Training: You must provide free health and safety training for your workers so they know what hazards and risks they may face and how to deal with them;
Competent Advisors: You must have competent advisors to help you meet your health and safety duties. This can be workers from your business, external consultants/advisers or a combination of these;
Provision of basic health, safety and welfare needs: You need to provide toilets, washing facilities and drinking water for all your employees, including those with disabilities. These are basic health, safety and welfare needs;
Consult employees: You must consult employees on health and safety matters;
Display Health and Safety Law Poster: If you have employees you must display the health and safety law poster or provide workers with a leaflet with the same information;
Report Accidents: If you are an employer, self-employed or in control of work premises, by law you must report some work-related accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences;
Get Registered: If you are a new business you will need to register either with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or your Local Authority - depending on the sort of business you have;
Carry out a fire assessment: As of 1st October 2006, new legislation puts an additional duty on those in control of premises, to carry out a fire assessment. Net Lawman has an in-depth article dedicated to explaining the new legislation.

Existing Businesses:

If you are already in business, you should alreadyhave a riskassessment and a healthandsafetypolicy. If you don’t, you need to read the earlier section of this article (for new businesses) carefully. You will find the key things you must do to manage health and safety at your work place;
If you have a HSE Policy, you need to;
Review your Risk Assessment: Review your risk assessment to make sure that precautions are still working effectively, especially if you bring in new machinery, substances or procedures which could lead to new hazards;
Review your Health and Safety Policy: Review your Health and Safety Policy to make sure it is up to date;
Ensure that your Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance up to date;
Review your Health and Safety Training Programme to ensure that all your employees have been trained and clearly instructed in their duties;
Review fire procedures: Old style 'fire certificates' will be invalid from Fist October 2006. New legislation dictates that you must carry out a fire assessment.

At Net Lawman, we have HSE Manuals and Policies which provide a ‘tailor-made’ structure for you to implement HSE policy in your organisation.

Click to buy: Construction Safety Plan
Click to download health and safety documents: Health and Safety Policies

If by chance you find some error of law or fact in any Net Lawman information page, do please tell us. We should also welcome your suggestions for new subjects for information pages. These notes: