The 1999 “Management Regulations”

Missing a trick

By and large, the UK’s 1974 Health & Safety at Work Act has stood the test of time, largely unchanged in its nearly half-century existence, and widely copied around the world.

Whereas the Act places a duty on employers to ensure the health, safety, and welfare at work of anyone affected by their business, I wonder if there is another discrete step to take first?

After all, how do you know what standard of health & safety to apply - doing neither too much nor too little?  Shouldn’t you look at what’s going on first and how high the bar is set before implementing a health & safety programme? 

Risk Assessment

This is where The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (“MHSWR” or just: “the Management Regs”) come in.  Arguably a quarter of a century late to the party, the Regulations instruct organisations to assess risks – and just so that enforcement authorities can be sure you’ve done so, to record those risk assessments and share them with the people affected.  Much has been written about the best ways of assessing risks – your Arinite consultant can help you here, and we publish one of our factsheets on the subject.  Maybe I’ll write a blog about risk assessment one day.

What's Next?

Producing risk assessments is only a means to an end, not the end itself, and unsurprisingly, the Management Regs expect you to do more than just file the risk assessment away.  You are required to put in place arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures that come from risk assessment – the classic Deming Cycle:

The Management Regs also expect you to seek competent assistance (for example when assessing risks).  In a small business, the competent person may be the owner; more complex organisations will require more levels of competence, perhaps using in-house specialists and/or bought-in consultants.

You're good to go!

Now that you’ve vested time in producing a “suitable and sufficient” risk assessment, why not get it to work for you?  If the assessment highlights that you require additional safeguards, build them into your own Deming Cycle that will move you towards your goal of meeting the Health & Safety at Work Act – and more.

Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment.

Our team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple.

If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office 0207 947 9581, or type an enquiry to: https://www.arinite.com/contact-us/