Risk assessments are important as they can help to avoid accidents and reduce the chance of a liability insurance claim.

Accidents can cost businesses a significant amount of money through damages claimed and it’s not all about costs. People are at stake when it comes to health and safety and businesses have a duty of care to ensure that employees and visitors to your workplace are safe.

Here is a 5 stage checklist to help you get started on conducting risk assessments.

Identifying the hazards

A good starting point is to walk round the site and make notes of potential hazards. The best way to do this is by using a risk assessment sheet, examples can be found the Health & Safety Executive website (HSE). You can also

• Talk to your employees to see what they think
• Check manufacturer’s instructions on company equipment
• Look through accident and ill health records to identify less obvious hazards

Identify who could be affected

The HSE recommend identifying which groups of people could be affected by different risks as not all risks affect everyone. Groups may include:

• Members of the public visiting your site
• Contractual workers who are not on site all the time
• Workers with specific needs such as pregnant or disabled people

Risk evaluation

Under health and safety law businesses must do everything “reasonably practical” to protect people from harm so each risk and how to deal with them should be considered individually.

The HSE suggests a comparison of good practices versus your current procedures and controls to help identify how to improve standards. Ask yourself the question – can this risk be removed altogether and if this isn’t possible how it can be controlled to reduce the likelihood of an accident. Risk can be reduced by preventing access to it, organising the work to reduce exposure to the risk or issuing the appropriate safety equipment.

Put precautions in place

Once the risk has been identified and how it will be dealt with has been recorded then the precautions should be put in place.

To comply with health & safety law you need to show that:

• A proper check was carried out
• You identified all who could be affected
• All obvious hazards have been dealt with
• Reasonable precautions have been put in place and any remaining risk is low
• Staff or their representatives have been involved in the process

Review and keep updated

Risk requires continuous assessment as things do change in the workplace such as the installation of new equipment. When updating your risk assessment here are a few considerations:

• Have there been any changes on site?
• Are there improvements that can be made?
• Have staff pointed out potential problem areas?
• Have you learnt anything from accidents or near misses?

If you would like to review your business insurance including public liability, please get in touch with the team at Lockyers or call 01924 278222.