Health and Safety Supplier Questionnaires: 8 Sections and What They Really Check
A questionnaire arrives from your largest client. Forty questions, a two-week deadline, and a covering note explaining that completion is a condition of remaining on the approved supplier list. Nobody in the business owns it. It lands with whoever is least able to refuse.
This is a different situation from bidding for work. In a tender you are making a case, and a thin answer costs you an opportunity you never had. Here you already have the relationship, the client is verifying something they assumed, and a thin answer creates a doubt that did not previously exist. The downside is asymmetric.
The reassuring part is that these questionnaires are more predictable than they look. Eight sections recur, and each one is checking something narrower and more specific than the question suggests. Knowing what the reviewer is actually looking for changes what you send.
1. The policy
What is asked: a copy of your health and safety policy.
What is checked: three things, in about fifteen seconds. Is it signed. Is it dated within the last twelve months or so. Is the signature someone senior enough to matter.
Nobody reads the body. The reviewer is establishing whether health and safety has genuine attention at the top of the organisation or exists as an administrative artefact. An unsigned policy, or one signed by an office manager, answers that question in a way you would not choose. HSE's guidance on writing a policy covers the substance, and our own health and safety policy overview covers what a group document should contain.
2. Competent advice
What is asked: who provides your health and safety advice, and what are their qualifications.
What is checked: whether competence is real or nominal. A named individual with a stated qualification reads very differently from "managed internally by the operations team".
Either an internal appointment or an external arrangement is fine. What fails is ambiguity, because ambiguity is how a reviewer distinguishes an organisation with a competent person from one that has never addressed the question.
3. Risk assessments
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What is asked: copies of, or confirmation of, your risk assessments.
What is checked: dates and coverage. Almost never content.
The reviewer wants to see that an assessment exists for each location, that it postdates the last significant change, and that somebody reviews them on a cycle. A single assessment covering "the office" for an organisation with four sites is the common failure, and it is visible immediately from the document header without anyone reading a word of the analysis.
4. Incident data
What is asked: accident and incident statistics, usually for three years.
What is checked: whether you record at all.
This is the section most often answered in a way that backfires. An organisation of two hundred office staff reporting zero incidents across three years is not demonstrating exemplary safety. It is demonstrating that nothing is being recorded, which an experienced reviewer will read correctly and which undermines every other answer in the return.
Report what happened, including minor events, and show the trend. Be clear about which events were reportable under RIDDOR or the equivalent national rules, because reportability and recordability are different thresholds and conflating them produces figures that do not reconcile. HSE sets out the reportable categories.
5. Enforcement history
What is asked: whether you have received any enforcement notices or prosecutions.
What is checked: honesty, not history.
Notices and prosecutions in Great Britain are published on public registers by the HSE, and equivalents exist elsewhere. The reviewer can search you independently and frequently has before sending the questionnaire. A disclosed notice, properly closed out with evidence, is a manageable answer. An undisclosed one that they already know about is a different conversation entirely, and it is no longer about health and safety.
6. Training
What is asked: training records, or a summary of training provided.
What is checked: whether training is systematic or occasional.
Three specifics carry the weight: that every new starter receives an induction, that there is a refresh cycle rather than a one-off, and that first aid and fire warden cover is proportionate to headcount at each site. An attendance list from three years ago demonstrates that a session happened, not that a system exists.
7. Insurance
What is asked: certificates of employers' liability and public liability cover.
What is checked: currency, and nothing else.
The fastest fail on the entire questionnaire, and the most avoidable. An expired certificate attached to an otherwise strong return stops the review. Check the dates before you send rather than after they ask.
8. Scope
What is asked: typically nothing explicit. It is implied by the phrase "your organisation".
What is checked: whether your answers cover the whole undertaking or only the part you were thinking about.
This is the section that unravels good returns. An organisation answers for its head office, and the client's own operations involve the subsidiary in Frankfurt, the delivery centre in Bangalore, or the subcontractors who actually attend site. The follow-up question is then unanswerable without a second round of work, and the impression created is that the first return was optimistic.
Answer for the undertaking as it touches that client. Where entities in other countries are involved, say so and describe how their local obligations are met, because a group that can speak to its overseas entities specifically is a considerably more comfortable supplier than one that cannot.
What the reviewer is scoring
| Section | What is actually assessed | Fast fail |
|---|---|---|
| Policy | Signed, dated, senior | Unsigned or years old |
| Competent advice | Named, qualified, unambiguous | "Handled internally" |
| Risk assessments | Dates and per-site coverage | One assessment, several sites |
| Incident data | That you record at all | Zero incidents over three years |
| Enforcement | Honesty against a public register | Undisclosed notice |
| Training | Systematic, with a refresh cycle | A single historical attendance list |
| Insurance | Current certificates | Expired |
| Scope | Whole undertaking, including overseas | Head office only |
Five of the eight are documentation problems rather than safety problems. That is worth stating plainly, because it means most organisations that score badly are safer than their return suggests, and the remedy is administrative rather than operational.
The thing nobody scores, which decides the impression
Turnaround.
A client who receives a complete return in three days concludes that you have this under control. The same client receiving the same return after three weeks of chasing concludes the opposite, and no amount of quality in the document corrects it. The delay is read as evidence that the information had to be assembled rather than retrieved.
This is the practical argument for holding the underlying material in one place across every entity rather than in several people's inboxes, which is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more in combination than either alone. It is also the argument for periodic health and safety audits: an audit conducted in advance produces exactly the evidence base a questionnaire asks for, which turns a fortnight of assembly into an afternoon of retrieval.
If you are also bidding for new work, the same material supports health and safety in tenders, and the two processes should draw on one source rather than two.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite helps organisations build the evidence base before the questionnaire arrives, which is considerably cheaper than assembling it under a deadline. 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 and professional services firms, where supplier assurance requests from corporate clients are now routine rather than exceptional.
Where the answer has to cover entities in several countries, our global health and safety consultants ensure each one meets its own national requirements, and our international health and safety consultants can tell you what each jurisdiction expects. If a questionnaire is sitting on someone's desk now, a free gap analysis will identify which of the eight sections you would struggle with before the client does.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
