Health & Safety Risk Assessments

Sentient provide cost effective, practical health and safety risk assessments to ensure your workplace is safe and so that you meet legal obligations as an employer. By law there are numerous assessments employers are obliged to complete as part of the Company’s Safety Management System.

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (1999) employers with 5 employees or more are legally obliged to carry out health and safety risk assessments within the business and to have a written document recording the findings and actions.

A health and safety risk assessment is an examination of what (process / machinery / products etc) could cause harm to workers within that business. Once a hazard is identified by the health and safety risk assessment, the employer must decide if enough action has been taken to prevent a worker being harmed or becoming ill. The aim is to ensure that precautions are in place to eliminate the risk, or reduce it so the chances of it occurring are extremely small. 

There are many benefits an organisation should enjoy as a consequence of completing health and safety risk assessments other than the obvious ones of reducing injuries, complaints, sickness and the possibility of compensation claims. Staff performance and morale improve with the knock on benefit of increasing the organisational performance as a whole.

Where there is a significant risk, the following assessments should be carried out and then reviewed on a regular basis, or following an incident or when there is a change within the business area. 

• General Work Premises Risk Assessment
• Manual Handling Assessments
• Fire Risk Assessment
• Work Equipment Risk Assessment
• Noise Monitoring and Assessment
• Personal Protective Equipment
• Hazardous Substances / COSHH
• Working at Heights Assessment
• Stress Assessment
• Company Transport Risk Assessment
• Display Screen Equipment (Computers etc)

This depends on the type of business and the nature of the tasks being performed. It should as a minimum identify the hazards and those exposed to the hazards. The level of Health and Safety risk needs to be evaluated (e.g. High/Medium/Low) and steps taken to eliminate the risk or reduce it to an acceptable level. All of this must be documented an evidence provided that the measures identified to reduce the risk have actually been provided (such as guarding, training or use of protective clothing etc). Finally a health and safety assessment should identify control mechanisms to ensure that whatever safety measures have been identified stay in place and are monitored to ensure they work effectively.

Sentient’s health and safety risk assessment consultants have years of experience in the industry and are members of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health or the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and members of the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register. They have a pragmatic and flexible approach to Health and Safety Risk Assessments, meet your requirements to reduce the risk of serious accidents or incidents in your work place in a cost effective way.

Each health and safety risk assessment is tailored to specifically meet the requirements of the business. Our health and safety risk assessment consultants don’t just provide you with the paperwork and blank forms - they actually carry out the health and safety risk assessments with you or for you. They will perform the inspections, interview staff as required, provide training as appropriate and write the whole thing up so that your organisation has a living document that can be used to monitor progress.

The health and safety risk assessments will then build up your Safety Management System and procedures and allow health and safety assessments to become part of your "culture".