Competent Person for Health and Safety:
What the Law Requires and How Arinite Can Help

A competent person in health and safety is someone with sufficient training, experience, knowledge, and other qualities to help an employer comply with health and safety law. This definition comes from Regulation 7(5) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) interprets competence as a combination of skills, experience, and knowledge, together with the ability to apply them to perform a task safely. There is no prescribed list of qualifications. The level of competence required must be proportionate to the complexity of the risks involved.

In a low-risk office environment, an employee with appropriate training and experience may be competent to fulfil the role. In a higher-risk, multi-site, or regulated environment, the competent person typically needs formal health and safety qualifications and practical experience across the relevant hazard types.

The competent person is not responsible for health and safety instead of the employer. The employer retains legal responsibility. The competent person assists the employer in meeting their obligations.

Yes. If you employ anyone, you need a competent person for health and safety. The obligation applies from the moment you have employees.

This is one of the most commonly misunderstood requirements in UK health and safety law. Many small businesses assume the obligation does not apply to them because they are 'just an office' or because they have fewer than five employees. The obligation applies regardless.

The only exemption is for self-employed individuals who are not in partnership and who have sufficient competence themselves (Regulation 7(6)). Everyone else must appoint.

If you are unsure whether your current arrangements satisfy the requirement, a 30-minute gap analysis call with one of Arinite's Chartered consultants will give you a definitive answer.

Regulation 7(8) gives preference to internal appointees. If someone in your business has the necessary competence, they should be appointed first. This makes sense: an internal person understands your operations, your culture, and your people.

However, the key word is 'competence.' An employee appointed without adequate training, experience, or knowledge does not satisfy the legal requirement, regardless of their job title or willingness. An inadequate internal appointment is worse than no appointment at all, because it creates a false sense of compliance.

Outsourcing the competent person role to an external health and safety consultancy is appropriate when nobody in your business holds formal health and safety qualifications, when your risks are complex or span multiple sites or countries, when you need Chartered-level expertise that an internal generalist cannot provide, or when the cost of hiring a dedicated health and safety professional is disproportionate to the size of your business.

Many businesses use a hybrid model: an internal coordinator handles day-to-day operations while an external Chartered consultant provides the strategic governance, conducts audits, writes risk assessments, and maintains the compliance framework. This is Arinite's 'Done With You' model.

The scope of the competent person's role depends on the business, but in a typical appointment the competent person is responsible for reviewing and maintaining the health and safety policy, ensuring suitable and sufficient risk assessments are in place for all work activities, coordinating health and safety audits on a defined schedule, advising on training requirements and ensuring training records are maintained, investigating accidents, incidents, and near misses, monitoring compliance with legislation and regulatory changes, liaising with the HSE or local authority enforcement officers if required, and advising directors and managers on their legal obligations.

The competent person does not replace the employer's responsibility. They assist the employer. The legal duty remains with the employer at all times.

When Arinite is appointed as your competent person, all of these responsibilities are documented, tracked, and maintained through our health and safety software platform. Your compliance is not stored in a filing cabinet. It is live, searchable, and ready to present to inspectors, clients, or auditors at any time.

The law does not prescribe specific qualifications. Competence is defined as sufficient training, experience, knowledge, and other qualities. However, when appointing an external consultant, qualifications provide objective evidence of competence.

The qualifications most commonly held by competent persons in the UK include NEBOSH National General Certificate (the standard entry-level qualification), NEBOSH National Diploma (the advanced qualification), IOSH Chartered membership (CMIOSH, representing the highest professional standard, held by approximately 5% of practitioners), and specialist qualifications in fire safety, environmental management, or specific sector regulations.

The Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSHCR) is the HSE-backed voluntary register for health and safety consultants. OSHCR registration requires evidence of competence and is the closest thing to an official endorsement of an external consultant.

All Arinite consultants appointed as competent persons hold Chartered IOSH membership and are OSHCR registered. This is a higher standard of competence than most businesses will find from other providers.

Failing to appoint a competent person is a breach of Regulation 7. The consequences include an improvement notice requiring you to appoint within a specified timescale, a prohibition notice if the lack of competent person support has created a serious risk, prosecution with unlimited fines, and personal criminal liability for directors under Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Beyond enforcement, the commercial consequences are often more immediate. Businesses without a documented competent person appointment fail pre-qualification questionnaires for public sector tenders, fail CHAS, SafeContractor, and other SSIP assessments, cannot demonstrate compliance to clients who require it as a contract condition, and face higher insurance premiums or policy exclusions.

The cost of appointing a competent person is a fraction of the cost of any of these outcomes.