Outsourced Health and Safety:
Competent Person Service for UK and International Businesses

Health and safety outsourcing means appointing an external health and safety consultancy to manage some or all of your health and safety obligations. At its core, it is the appointment of a competent person (or team) who is not an employee of your organisation but who takes legal responsibility for ensuring your compliance.

The service is sometimes referred to as retained health and safety, outsourced health and safety support, or a competent person service. The terms are interchangeable. What matters is the scope: a genuine outsourced service handles policy creation, risk assessments, audits, training, incident management, and ongoing compliance monitoring, not just occasional advice.

Health and safety outsourcing is not a recent trend. Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 has required every employer to appoint a competent person since it came into force. What has changed is the complexity of compliance: more regulations, more jurisdictions, more remote working, and more scrutiny from clients, insurers, and procurement teams. For many businesses, outsourcing is now the only practical way to meet these obligations without hiring a full-time specialist.

The decision to outsource health and safety is rarely about the cost of compliance. It is about the cost of getting it wrong.

Directors carry personal criminal liability for health and safety failures under Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Fines for health and safety offences are unlimited. In the most serious cases, directors face imprisonment. The legal exposure is not theoretical: HSE prosecutes hundreds of cases every year, and fines for serious offences regularly reach six figures.

But prosecution is not the only risk. Increasingly, clients require evidence of health and safety compliance before awarding contracts. Tenders for public sector work, facilities management, and professional services routinely require audit reports, competent person documentation, and evidence of a functioning management system. Businesses without these credentials lose contracts they would otherwise win.

Outsourcing to a health and safety consultancy that provides both Chartered consultants and compliance software gives you documented, provable compliance that satisfies inspectors, clients, and insurers simultaneously.

Under Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, where a health and safety offence is committed with the consent, connivance, or neglect of any director, manager, or similar officer, that individual can be prosecuted personally. This is not a corporate fine. It is personal criminal liability.

Outsourcing health and safety to a Chartered consultancy provides documented evidence of due diligence. You can demonstrate that you appointed a competent person with appropriate qualifications, that your health and safety management system was independently created and maintained, that your premises were audited on a defined schedule, and that identified actions were tracked through to completion.

This does not make you immune from prosecution. But it demonstrates that you took all reasonably practicable steps, which is the legal test under the Act. The alternative, having no appointed competent person and no functioning management system, is indefensible.

Outsourced health and safety does not mean replacing your internal resource. Many of Arinite's clients have an office manager, facilities coordinator, or HR lead who handles day-to-day health and safety alongside their primary role. The outsourced service makes that person significantly more effective.

Your internal person handles the daily operational tasks: ensuring the office is tidy, coordinating fire drills, managing first aid supplies, and being the first point of contact for staff queries. Arinite's Chartered consultant provides the strategic framework: creating the policies, writing the risk assessments, conducting the audits, delivering the training, and maintaining the compliance platform.

This model is Arinite's 'Done With You' tier. It is the most popular option for businesses with 50 to 250 employees who have some internal capability but need Chartered-level governance behind it.

Many businesses outsource health and safety specifically because they need accreditation to win contracts. CHAS (Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme), SafeContractor, Constructionline, and other SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) members require evidence of a functioning health and safety management system.

Arinite prepares and submits accreditation applications as part of the outsourced service. Our consultants ensure your documentation meets the scheme requirements, complete the application on your behalf, and handle any queries or additional evidence requests from the assessment body.

For businesses already holding accreditation, the outsourced service ensures your management system remains current between renewal cycles, so reaccreditation is straightforward rather than a last-minute scramble.