Competent Advice on Health and Safety

By law all businesses must have competent advice to help you meet your health and safety duties.

This can be provided by workers from your business, external advisers or a combination of these.

You must appoint one or more competent persons to help you comply with your duties under health and safety law so that you can prevent accidents and ill health at work.

In practice you could appoint:

• yourself, if you are sure you know enough about what you would have to do
• one or more of your employees, ensuring you give them enough time and other resources to do the job properly
• someone from outside your business to help you, if neither you nor your employees have sufficient competence or resources

Getting Help with Health and Safety

You can download a leaflet from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which has checklists to help you decide whether you need outside help, what to look for and where to go for qualified help. It outlines different types of health and safety specialists and the help they can give.