Health and safety duties for a UK employer

Every UK employer has a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of its employees. It is criminal law, not a code of practice, which is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive. For an office-based subsidiary the obligations are modest. For a company doing anything physical they are not, and the penalties fall on the company and can fall on directors personally.

What every UK employer must have

• A risk assessment of the workplace, recorded in writing where you have five or more employees.
• A written health and safety policy, again once you reach five employees.
• Employers' liability insurance of at least £5 million, with the certificate displayed or accessible to staff. Trading without it carries a daily penalty.
• Arrangements for first aid, appropriate to the size and nature of the workplace.
• Fire risk assessment and the means of escape, which is a separate duty from general health and safety.
• An accident book and a route for reporting incidents, including the specific injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences that must be reported to the HSE.

Less familiar duties

Homeworkers count. An employee working from their own home in the UK is still your employee at work, and the duty extends to them. A display screen equipment assessment, done as a short questionnaire, covers most of it, which is the item remote-first groups most often skip entirely.

Display screen equipment. Anyone using a screen as a significant part of their job is entitled to an assessment, and to an eye test paid for by the employer on request. Inexpensive, occasionally claimed, rarely provided for.

Directors can be liable personally where an offence is committed with their consent or connivance, or is attributable to their neglect. Delegating the topic to a UK manager does not remove it from the board.

What we do

We put the framework in place before the first employee starts: the risk assessment, the policy, the insurance certificate, the accident book and the reporting route, plus the homeworker and screen assessments. We review it when the UK team grows or the workplace changes. Where the UK operation is not an office, and particularly where it involves premises, machinery, vehicles or the public, we bring in a specialist health and safety consultant, because that is a different discipline and a generalist should not be the one signing it off.