Health and Safety Documents: The 12 to Have Ready
Three different people ask an organisation for its health and safety paperwork: an inspector, a client running supplier due diligence, and an insurer at renewal. They ask for broadly the same things, and organisations that can produce them quickly tend to be organisations that were doing the work anyway.
This is a list of twelve, with what triggers each and where it actually comes from. It is not a filing exercise. Each document exists because a duty produced it, and a document without the underlying activity behind it is worse than nothing, because it evidences that you knew.
One threshold recurs throughout: several recording duties bite at five or more employees. The underlying duty applies from the first employee; what changes at five is the obligation to write it down.
1. The health and safety policy
Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires a written statement of general policy on health and safety, together with the organisation and arrangements for carrying it out, where five or more people are employed. It must be revised as often as appropriate and brought to employees' attention.
Three parts, and organisations routinely produce only the first: the statement of intent, signed at senior level; the organisation, meaning who is responsible for what by name or role; and the arrangements, meaning how things actually happen. A policy consisting of a page of intent has a third of what the section asks for.
2. Risk assessments
The core document, required under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, with significant findings recorded where five or more are employed.
What matters is not length but whether the assessment identifies the measures needed, reflects the work as actually done, and addresses the significant risks rather than every conceivable one. Those are the tests worth applying before anyone else applies them.
3. The fire risk assessment
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Separate from the above, required under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, with recording obligations where five or more are employed.
Check the date. A fire risk assessment that predates your last fit-out, move, occupancy change or the installation of anything new in the building is out of date regardless of what its review box says.
4. The employers' liability certificate
Compulsory insurance under the 1969 Act, with the certificate required to be accessible to employees. Retain historic certificates as well as the current one, because occupational disease claims attach to the policy in force at the time of exposure, sometimes decades later.
5. The accident record
The accident book, whose legal basis sits in social security legislation rather than health and safety law. Removable pages or a controlled electronic system, stored securely, because entries are health data about identifiable people.
6. RIDDOR records
Records of reportable incidents are required under the reporting regulations, separately from both the accident book and the report itself. Three obligations, frequently conflated into one.
7. Training records
Training duties run through the Management Regulations and, for fire, through the Fire Safety Order. What is needed is evidence of who was trained, in what, when, and when it expires.
Expiry is the part that fails. First aid and fire warden certificates lapse, and a training record without renewal dates is a snapshot rather than a system.
8. Competent person appointments
The Management Regulations require the appointment of one or more competent persons to assist in complying with statutory duties, and article 18 of the Fire Safety Order requires the same for fire.
This should be a named, dated, written appointment. Where the function is provided externally, the contract evidences it. Where nobody has been appointed, that absence is straightforward for an inspector to establish and awkward to explain.
9. Display screen equipment assessments
Regulation 2 of the Display Screen Equipment Regulations requires a suitable and sufficient analysis of workstations to assess the risks to users.
In a hot desking or hybrid organisation this needs to cover the configurations people actually use rather than assigned desks, and the record should show what was provided as well as what was recommended.
10. COSHH assessments, where applicable
Regulation 6 of the COSHH Regulations requires an assessment before work liable to expose employees to substances hazardous to health.
Most offices assume this does not apply to them and most are wrong in one respect: cleaning products. Whether they are yours or your contractor's, somebody should hold the assessment and the safety data, and in many buildings nobody does.
11. Maintenance and testing records
Two duties converge here. Work equipment must be maintained in efficient working order under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations, and fire safety facilities, equipment and devices require a suitable system of maintenance under the Fire Safety Order.
In practice this means the fire alarm, emergency lighting, extinguisher and fire door records, plus electrical maintenance. In leased buildings much of it sits with the operator, which makes obtaining copies part of the arrangement rather than an afterthought.
12. Asbestos information, in older buildings
Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 imposes a duty to manage asbestos in non-domestic premises, including a written plan where asbestos is or is presumed to be present.
For a tenant this is usually the landlord's document, and your obligation is to hold the relevant information and provide it to anyone whose work could disturb the fabric. A contractor drilling a wall in a building constructed before 2000 should not be the person who discovers nobody has looked.
The twelve, and what triggers each
| Document | Trigger | Frequently missing |
|---|---|---|
| Policy | Written at 5+ employees | Organisation and arrangements sections |
| Risk assessments | Recorded at 5+ | Current, and matching actual work |
| Fire risk assessment | Recorded at 5+ | Review after changes |
| EL certificate | All employers | Historic certificates |
| Accident record | All employers | Secure, compliant format |
| RIDDOR records | On reportable events | Kept separately from the book |
| Training records | Training duties | Expiry dates |
| Competent person | All employers | Written, named appointment |
| DSE assessments | Users | Provision, not just assessment |
| COSHH | Hazardous substances present | Cleaning products |
| Maintenance records | Equipment and fire systems | Copies from the landlord |
| Asbestos | Pre-2000 premises | Information passed to contractors |
Two patterns are worth noting. Four of the twelve are commonly held by a landlord rather than by you, which makes obtaining them a standing arrangement rather than a one-off request. And the right-hand column is mostly about currency and completeness rather than existence: the document usually exists and does not do what it needs to.
HSE's introduction to managing health and safety sets out the underlying framework these documents come from.
For international groups
The list above is British. The principle behind it transfers and the list itself does not, in three specific ways.
The documents differ. France requires a DUERP in prescribed form. Colombia requires an annual self-evaluation with a score. Bulgaria requires an annual declaration filed with the labour inspectorate. Morocco requires an annual prevention programme and a special register held locally. Kenya requires an annual audit by a state-approved advisor with the report going to the regulator.
The author differs. Hungary reserves risk assessment to a qualified specialist. Greece requires the assessment to be prepared by the appointed safety technician and occupational physician. Indonesia and Colombia require licensed professionals.
The location differs. Several jurisdictions require documents to be held at the establishment and produced on request, which a group register in another country does not satisfy.
The workable pattern is one group standard describing what quality looks like, with each entity producing its own national artefact locally. That is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits confirm each entity holds what its own jurisdiction expects rather than what the group standard describes.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite produces the arrangements these documents record, which is the part that matters when someone reads them properly. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, finance and banking and IT and software organisations, most of which occupy premises they do not control and therefore depend on somebody else for a third of this list.
Where entities sit in several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires, in what form and held where, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.
If a client asked for your health and safety documentation tomorrow, and you would need a week to assemble it, a free gap analysis will tell you which of the twelve are missing rather than merely misfiled.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
