In this post we dive deeper into what is meant by Competent Person for Health and Safety as required by the Management of Health and Safety at Work Act (1999).

What is a “Competent Person”?

A “competent person” is someone appointed to ensure that a company’s health and safety responsibilities are being met. It’s their job to recognise the health and safety risks within your workplace and identify sensible and suitable solutions. Typically this is a person with sufficient training, experience and both legal and sector specific knowledge.

… It’s a really important part of a business’s legal requirements!

Inhouse or External?

Some organisations do manage this inhouse, but a lot of organisations come to us as experts to help them fulfil their obligations and to support them in making sure that their workplaces are as safe and accident free as possible.

In addition to bringing best practice guidance, bringing in an agency like HSM means that business owners/managers can devote their time to what they do best – whether that is running projects or managing a retail or manufacturing operation.

And What Does A Competent Person Do?

Initially there may be set up work including site audits, fire risk assessments, setting up processes such as accident reporting. Alongside this there may be training recommendations to ensure your staff are able operate safely with the risks they face. Once obligations have been met we’re there in the background to offer advice, documentation, systems and ongoing support as your business changes, or if accidents happen.

Anything Else?

Technically the Management of Health and Safety at Work Act (1999) reinforces and extends the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 – which 48 years ago set out the framework for raising the bar and protecting employees in the workplace from accidents and risk.

Industry Standard

Although your organisation may be unique with its own challenges, a lot of the solutions that we provide; site audits, training recommendations, documentation systems – draw from best practice. This best practice has been implemented by HSM in organisations similar to yours, but perhaps in other parts of the country

If you have specific questions about how to address the Competent Person question in your organisation, please do drop us a line.

You may also want to read our article which dives deeper into some of the tasks we cover in our retained services.