Health and Safety Policy

2.1

Background

As with many aspects of business, policy is an important part of achieving

compliance and managing health and safety. As well as being a specific required of
the HSWA 1974, policies form the starting point of safety management systems.
2.1.1

What is a Health and Safety policy?

According to Successful Health and Safety Management HSG65 (guidance from

HSE), a health and safety policy is used to convey

The general intentions, approach and objectives of an organisation;

The criteria and principles on which its actions and responses are based.

Effective health and safety policies set a clear direction for the organisation to
follow.
In a similar vein, OHSAS 18001 , the occupational health and safety standard,
requires a health and safety policy that states clearly overall health and safety
objectives and a commitment to improving health and safety performance.
Reference HSG65 is available to download free at
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg65.pdf
2.1.2

Legal requirements

Under the HSWA1974 an employer has a duty to prepare a written statement of

general policy with respect to health and safety together with the organisation and
arrangements for carrying out the policy if five or more people are employed at any
one time for a single undertaking. In most cases it is quite clear which
organisations are exempt from this duty. However, there is some case law (Osborne
vs. Taylor of Huyton) that has provided further explanation that may be illustrated
by the following scenarios:
1. An undertaking requires three people. It may be that three people are employed
for the first part of the week and a different three for the second part of the week.
Even though there are six people employed by the business they are never present
at any one time, and so there is no legal requirement to prepare a policy.

2. An organisation has two business locations, each employing three people. In this
case the two locations are considered to be part of the same undertaking and so
there will be six people employed and there is a legal requirement to prepare a
policy.
In reality preparing a health and safety policy is not a particularly onerous
undertaking and for any organisation that employs people it would be quite
reasonable to do this, even if there was not a legal duty.
2.1.3

Contents of policy

A written health and safety policy needs to cover the following:

1. Statement of intent this demonstrates managements commitment to health
and safety and sets goals and objectives for the organisation;
2. An organisation overview - allocates key health and safety responsibilities and
reporting lines within the organisation;
3. An overview of arrangements - sets how systems and procedures are used to
implement the policy in practice.
In most cases a policy can be covered on a single page. It will usually be necessary
to provide more information about the organisation and arrangements, to provide
the detail necessary to fully implement the policy. Health and safety policies should
be signed by the most senior person in the business.
Reference - A template for developing a health and safety policy is available free at
http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/risk-assessment-and-policy-template.doc
2.1.4

Communicating the policy

It does not matter how good a health and safety policy is if no one knows it exists or
no one ever reads it. Therefore it is vital that time and effort is put into
communication to avoid it becoming a paper only exercise that will make little
difference to health and safety performance.
Ensuring a health and safety policy is as brief as possible (whilst covering thing it
needs to) and presented in a clear and simple fashion will certainly increases the
chances that people will read it and understand what it means. On top of that the
options for communication include:

Giving employees their own personal copy of the policy or a summary of it;

Displaying the policy on notice boards;

Explaining the content of the policy at team briefings or tool-box talks;

Explaining it during induction and refresher training courses;

Referring to the policy in internal newsletters, booklets, emails and intranet

communications;
Making the policy an agenda item at meetings of the health and safety
committee.
It is unlikely that people will choose to read it on a regular basis and are liable to
forget what it says over time. Therefore it is important that the policy is
communicated in a number of different ways on a frequent basis.
2.1.5

Updating a policy

It is vital to keep the policy up-to-date; otherwise it will lose its relevance and can
even become counterproductive. Circumstances in which it should be reviewed
include:

Significant changes in the organization;

Introduction of new or changed processes or work methods;

Changes in key personnel;

Changes in legislation;

As a result of risk assessments, monitoring exercises or investigations that show

the policy is no longer effective or relevant;

Following audits;

Comments from staff;

Following enforcement action;

On a regular basis (an annual review is probably a sensible idea).

It is important that any changes are communicated to those likely to be affected.

Just telling them the policy has changed is unlikely to be wholly effective, and it is
normally necessary to explain what those changes mean to individuals with regard
to necessary changes to procedures and behaviours in order to implement the new
policy.