Health and Safety Competent Person: 14 Things Regulation 7 Requires
Ask a forty person law firm, software business or insurance broker who its competent person is and you will usually get one of three answers. A name, said with hesitation. The name of a consultancy. Or a pause, followed by a question.
All three are worth examining, because the duty behind the question is short, specific and almost never read. Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 runs to eight paragraphs. Those paragraphs set out who must be appointed, how many, how much time they need, what they must be told, and what competence means.
Two of them cut against what the consultancy market usually implies. Regulation 7 names no qualification, and where a competent employee exists it requires that person to be appointed in preference to an outsider. We say that as a consultancy, because an appointment built on a wrong reading of the rule is the one nobody can evidence later.
Here are fourteen things the appointment requires. Ten come from regulation 7 itself. Four sit just outside it, and are where the arrangement comes apart.
What regulation 7 itself says
1. The duty is to appoint, and it applies to every employer. Regulation 7(1) requires an employer to appoint one or more competent persons to assist in undertaking the measures needed to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed by the relevant statutory provisions. There is no headcount threshold and no low hazard exemption. An office business with nine people owes this exactly as a factory does.
2. Where you appoint more than one, they must co-operate. Regulation 7(2) requires the employer to make arrangements for ensuring adequate co-operation between appointees. This bites in practice when facilities holds the building, HR holds wellbeing and an external consultancy holds the paperwork, and none of the three has met the other two.
3. The number appointed must be adequate. Regulation 7(3) requires the employer to ensure that the number of persons appointed is adequate, having regard to the size of the undertaking, the risks to which employees are exposed, and the distribution of those risks. A single appointee across eleven offices in six countries is a number question, not a competence question.
4. They must have enough time. The same paragraph requires that the time available to the appointees is adequate. This is the most commonly breached part of the regulation. The appointment is often added to an office manager's job with no time released, which satisfies the appointment and fails the adequacy test in the same sentence.
5. They must have adequate means at their disposal. Regulation 7(3) also requires the means available to the appointees to be adequate. Budget, access to information, access to the buildings, and standing to escalate. An appointee who cannot commission an assessment or get on a board agenda has not been given means.
6. An external appointee has to be told what you know. Regulation 7(4)(a) requires an employer appointing someone who is not an employee to ensure that person is informed of the factors known, or suspected, to affect the health and safety of any other person who may be affected, and has access to the information referred to in regulation 10.
That reverses the usual assumption. People think they are buying knowledge. The regulation says they owe their appointee information, which includes the risks identified by the assessment, the preventive and protective measures, and the emergency procedures. A consultancy working from an incomplete brief is partly the client's compliance problem.
7. They must be told about fixed-term and agency staff. Regulation 7(4)(b) requires appointees to be given information on any person working under a fixed-term contract or employed in an employment business. Agency and contract staff are frequently invisible to whoever holds safety, which is exactly why the paragraph exists.
8. Competence has no named qualification. Regulation 7(5) defines a competent person as someone with sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to enable them properly to assist. No certificate, register or named qualification appears anywhere in regulation 7.
The HSE's guidance on what competence is takes the same line, describing competence as the combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge and the ability to apply them safely, and noting that the level should suit the job and the workplace. So a qualification is evidence of competence, not the definition of it, and the test is whether the person can do the thing in front of them.
9. Sole traders are exempt, on conditions. Regulation 7(6) disapplies the appointment duty for a self-employed employer with no partners who has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to carry out the measures themselves.
10. Partnerships are exempt, on conditions. Regulation 7(7) does the same for individuals who are employers and carry on business in partnership, where at least one has the necessary qualities to meet their own obligations and assist their fellow partners. Both exemptions are conditional on actual capability, so neither is a route for a growing firm with employees.
11. A competent employee comes first. Regulation 7(8) is the provision almost nobody quotes. Where there is a competent person in the employer's employment, that person must be appointed in preference to a competent person not in that employment.
Read plainly, the law prefers an internal appointment where you genuinely have one. It does not prohibit external appointment, and it does not require you to invent internal capability you do not have. What it does mean is that the defensible arrangement in most mid-sized organisations is a named internal appointee with external support behind them, rather than a consultancy named in isolation. The HSE's guidance on getting help points the same way.
The four that sit just outside the regulation
12. The evacuation competent person is a separate appointment. Regulation 8 requires procedures to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger, and requires the employer to nominate a sufficient number of competent persons to implement the evacuation procedures. Regulation 8(3) gives that role its own competence test, framed around carrying out the evacuation procedures properly.
So there are two appointments, with two competence tests, and the fire marshals are not the regulation 7 appointee by default. Our note on the competent person in fire safety covers the fire side, which adds further named roles again.
13. Competence is specific, not general. Nothing in regulation 7 makes competence transferable across every risk a business holds. Someone competent on office risk, display screens and fire routine may have no basis for advising on a laboratory or a pressure vessel. Scope the appointment and name who covers what, which is what regulation 7(2) anticipates.
14. The appointment does not move the duty. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places the duty to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of employees on the employer, so far as is reasonably practicable. Appointing a competent person is how an employer gets help with that duty. It is not a transfer of it, and no contract with a consultancy changes who the duty holder is.
The consequence matters at board level. The appointment is assistance, the accountability stays, and regulation 5 separately requires arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective measures. Our note on the health and safety management system covers what those look like.
The fourteen, and the paragraph each comes from
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| Requirement | Source | What usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Appoint one or more competent persons | reg 7(1) | Nobody appointed, or nobody can name them |
| Co-operation between appointees | reg 7(2) | Internal and external parties never meet |
| Adequate number | reg 7(3) | One appointee across many sites |
| Adequate time | reg 7(3) | Role added with no time released |
| Adequate means | reg 7(3) | No budget and no route to escalate |
| Inform a non-employee appointee | reg 7(4)(a) | Consultancy briefed from a partial picture |
| Information on fixed-term and agency staff | reg 7(4)(b) | Contract staff invisible to whoever holds safety |
| Competence defined, no qualification named | reg 7(5) | Certificate treated as the test |
| Sole trader exemption | reg 7(6) | Relied on after taking on employees |
| Partnership exemption | reg 7(7) | Assumed rather than tested |
| Competent employee preferred | reg 7(8) | External appointment with no internal owner |
| Evacuation appointment | reg 8(1), 8(3) | Assumed covered by the reg 7 appointee |
| Competence is risk-specific | general | One appointee assumed to cover everything |
| The duty stays with the employer | HSWA s2 | Accountability treated as outsourced |
The three rows worth fixing first are adequate time, the reg 7(8) internal preference and the evacuation appointment, because all three are free to correct and visible to anyone who asks.
Recording the appointment is the other free thing. Nothing in regulation 7 prescribes a form, which is why most organisations have nothing, and every supplier questionnaire, insurance renewal and due diligence pack asks for a name. Holding the appointment, its scope, the time allowed and the evidence of competence in one place is a practical case for health and safety consultants and software working as one thing. Periodic health and safety audits should open with it: ask for the name, the scope and the date.
How the appointment changes abroad
For groups with offices in several countries this is one of the areas where the British approach is the outlier rather than the template.
Regulation 7 names no qualification, sets no minimum hours and lets the employer judge adequacy. Most other regimes do the opposite on at least one axis. Several European systems require the employer to adopt a prescribed organisational arrangement, with an external prevention service compelled where internal capacity is absent, and several set the specialist's qualification or the appointment time by national rule rather than by the employer's judgement. Spain's requirement to adopt a defined preventive modality is the clearest example, and Germany's named safety specialists with prescribed appointment time another.
The consequence is specific. An appointee's identity travels and so does the scope document. Adequacy does not. A group exporting the British test, the employer's own view of what is adequate, will understate the appointment in every country that sets hours or qualification centrally. Our note on the competent person role across jurisdictions covers how the role is framed in different systems.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite is appointed as the competent person by organisations with no internal safety function, and more often sits behind a named internal appointee who has the standing but not the technical depth. Regulation 7(8) is why we recommend the second arrangement wherever a capable internal owner exists. We support 1,500+ businesses in 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
Our health and safety consultants work extensively with offices, legal, insurance, IT and software and education clients, where the appointment is usually held by someone whose job title says nothing about safety. Our notes on outsourced health and safety, the level of support to take and questions to ask before hiring an advisor cover the choice, while health and safety outsourcing and your health and safety policy are where the appointment gets recorded. Our earlier note on the competent person role gives the practitioner's view.
For multi-country groups, our global health and safety consultants apply the local modality and appointment rule rather than the British adequacy test, and our international health and safety consultants can tell you which countries set the hours or the qualification for you.
Ask three questions this week. Who is our competent person, how much time do they have, and where is that written down. Then book a free gap analysis and we will tell you in one call which of the fourteen your appointment can evidence.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
