The Health and Safety Year: 12 Months, 12 Actions
Nothing in health and safety law requires an annual calendar. What it requires is assessment, review where circumstances change, and arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective measures under regulation 5 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
The reason organisations end up with a calendar anyway is that those obligations are continuous, nobody owns continuous, and arrangements decay quietly when nothing triggers a look.
What follows is one workable shape for an office-based business with entities in more than one country. The months are a suggestion. The twelve actions are not, and several of them have dates attached that are not yours to move.
January: confirm who holds what
Start the year with a list rather than a project.
For each entity: who is the competent person, who holds the fire risk assessment, who are the first aiders and fire wardens, who deals with the landlord, and who would notify a regulator. Then check each of those people still works there.
Named safety roles concentrate in individuals and leave with them. After a year of ordinary turnover, a proportion of that list will be wrong, and this is the single cheapest check on this page.
February: training expiry sweep
Pull every certificate with an expiry date: first aid, fire warden, and any role-specific qualification.
Renewals lapse silently because most training records capture what was done and not when it runs out. Doing this early in the year gives you time to book, which is the constraint that actually bites.
March: ask the landlord
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Request current copies of everything the building owner holds: the premises fire risk assessment, alarm and emergency lighting testing, extinguisher servicing, lift examination reports, asbestos information and water hygiene records.
Requesting annually establishes a rhythm and produces a dated record of what you asked for, which matters if the answer is unsatisfactory.
April: the overseas filings check
The month with real deadlines attached in some jurisdictions.
Bulgaria requires an annual declaration to be filed with the Labour Inspectorate by 30 April. Several other entities in a typical group portfolio have their own annual obligations: Colombia's self-evaluation, Kenya's annual audit, Morocco's annual report and prevention programme, Croatia and Slovenia's prescribed examinations.
If your group has entities abroad, this is the month to confirm each one's annual obligation has been met rather than assumed.
May: a drill worth running
Run a fire drill that tests something.
Not announced, not at eleven on a Tuesday when everybody is present, and not measured only by elapsed time. Test whether visitors were accounted for, whether anyone with a personal evacuation plan was assisted, and whether the roll call actually worked.
Article 9 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires review where the assessment is no longer valid, and a drill is the cheapest way to find out whether it is.
June: workstations and the people at them
The display screen cycle, covering the arrangements people actually use rather than an assigned desk.
For hybrid staff that means home as well as office. For hot deskers it means the configurations in use. And it is the natural point to check that anything identified as needed was actually provided, which is where these processes usually fail.
July: heat, air and the entities where it is regulated
Summer raises three things at once.
Ventilation under load, which after any increase in occupancy or equipment may no longer be what was specified. Temperature, where the duty is a reasonable one rather than a numerical limit. And in several jurisdictions, a genuine legal restriction: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait all operate summer limits on outdoor work, which reach the security, facilities and driving populations connected to an office rather than the people at desks.
August: reassess what changed
The quieter month, and the right one for the assessment review that never fits elsewhere.
Work through what has changed since the last review: moves, fit-outs, headcount, new equipment, new working patterns, new locations, new activities. Each is a trigger, and the assessment in the file usually describes an earlier version of the organisation.
September: the return, and what it changes
Occupancy rises, new starters arrive, and graduate intakes land.
Three checks. Welfare provision against actual peak occupancy rather than headcount. Induction for everyone who joined over the summer, including contractors and agency staff who sit outside the HR system. And first aid and fire warden cover against the population now present.
October: the fixed dates
October carries specific dates this year and testing obligations every year.
The strengthened preventative duty on harassment and the return of third-party liability take effect on 30 October 2026, having moved from 1 October, with the expectation that employers hold a risk assessment covering harassment risk including from third parties.
Alongside that sits the routine: article 17 of the Fire Safety Order requires a suitable system of maintenance for fire safety equipment, and autumn is when the darker months make emergency lighting worth confirming.
November: the board conversation
Prepare the annual report that somebody accountable will actually read.
Not an incident count. The open action list with ages, what changed during the year, which entities are furthest from their own national requirements, and what is being accepted with reasons. Where officers carry duties expressed as verification rather than receipt, this is the month to give them something they did not receive through the management line being assessed.
December: close, retain, and cover the quiet weeks
Three things.
Close the year's actions, or record explicitly why each remains open. An action list carried into a new year without that record is how items become two years old.
Check retention. Health records, insurance certificates and assessments have long tails, and this is the moment to confirm nothing is being disposed of on an ordinary corporate schedule.
Plan the quiet period. Buildings run with skeleton staff, contractors work while offices are empty, and lone working rises sharply. Know who is in, and who would notice if they were not.
The twelve, in short
| Month | Action |
|---|---|
| January | Confirm who holds each named role, and that they are still there |
| February | Training expiry sweep |
| March | Request current landlord documents |
| April | Overseas annual filings confirmed |
| May | A drill that tests accounting and assistance |
| June | Workstations, including home setups, and provision |
| July | Ventilation, temperature, and hot-climate entities |
| August | Assessment review against what changed |
| September | Welfare, induction and cover against actual occupancy |
| October | The 30 October duty, and fire equipment maintenance |
| November | A board report with open actions and accepted risks |
| December | Close actions, check retention, plan the quiet weeks |
Two things to note about that table. Most of these take an hour, and the value comes from them happening at all rather than from any particular month. And four of the twelve concern entities and buildings you do not control, which is where a group's exposure usually sits.
HSE's framework for managing health and safety describes the plan, do, check, act cycle this calendar is one expression of, and its introduction covers the baseline proportionately.
For international groups
Two adjustments.
The calendar must be per entity, not per group. The obligations above that carry dates are national, and several entities have annual duties with no British equivalent. A single group calendar will miss them, which is why April in the table above is a check rather than an action.
Local years differ. Filing deadlines, holiday periods and inspection seasons vary, and a group calendar built around a British financial year will place reviews in the wrong months for several entities.
Holding each entity's cycle, deadlines and status in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits are how you find out whether a calendar is being followed or filed.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite runs this cycle for organisations that know it should happen and have nobody whose job it is. 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.
Where entities sit in several countries, our global health and safety consultants build the calendar per entity against each national requirement, and our international health and safety consultants keep it current as those requirements change.
If you could not say what happened to last year's open actions, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
