11.07.2006

HSE revamps guidance to simplify risk assessments

The Health and Safety Executive has today urged businesses to spend more time on putting practical risk assesment actions into effect and less time dotting the 'i's and crossing 't's.

To help companies do this, the HSE has issued a revamped risk assessment guide featuring examples that spell out, in plain English, what is and what is not expected.

Launching the guidance, HSE's Deputy Chief Executive, Jonathan Rees, said: "We want to save lives, not tie businesses up in red tape. Good risk assessment is the way to achieve this. Risk assessment is at the heart of sensible health and safety. We believe it should be a practical way of protecting people from real harm and suffering, not a bureaucratic back-covering exercise.

On its own paperwork never saved a life, it needs to be a means to an end, resulting in actions that protect people in practice.

He continued: "I hope that this new, more straightforward guidance will help managers understand what's expected of them and get more focus on the kind of risks that cause real harm and suffering. Risks that killed 220 workers last year and resulted in 35 million working days being lost. This guide takes
the user through the process step-by-step with the minimum of fuss to achieve this aim."

The guidance 'Five Steps to Risk Assessment' which was first published in 1993, has been revised and simplified to make it even easier for normal business people, not just health and safety experts, to use.

It also places greater emphasis on making sure that decisions are actually put into practice.

The 11-page booklet, which is also available free online at:
www.hse.gov.uk/risk, provides advice and tips on five key elements to an effective risk assessment, identifying the hazards, deciding who might be harmed and how, evaluating the risks and deciding on precautions, recording findings and implementing them and finally ensuring they are reviewed at
regular intervals.



This is supported by four examples of what a risk assessment might look like. The examples help emphasise that risk assessment need not be difficult and the paperwork need not be long and complicated. For most, bullet points work very well.


Copies of Five Steps to Risk Assessment, INDG163(rev2), are available from HSE Books, PO Box 1999, Sudbury, Suffolk CO10 2WA, tel: 01787-881165 or fax: 01787-313995.

Alternatively the leaflet can be downloaded free from the HSE
website at: www.hse.gov.uk/risk