Health & Safety

Are you on the right side of the law?

Creating a safe working environment is not only a legal obligation, it’s also in the best interests of you and your business. With around 3.7 million days lost to injury each year in the UK, it’s simply common sense to keep people safe at work.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act, you are responsible for making sure your business is on the right side of the law whether you’re a sole trader or a director. This means that you have policies and procedures in place to make sure you take appropriate steps to manage health and safety effectively.

In a worst-case scenario, health and safety failures can lead to prosecution, fines, imprisonment, and the risk of being sued for damages. All cases prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive are also online in a publicly available list.

The good news, however, is that you can reduce risks fairly easily.

Getting the basics right

There are specific laws that will apply to any renewable energy or energy efficiency trades business. GreenPro can help you to identify which of these apply to you. Apart from that, we can also help you to get some other basics right. These include:

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  Risk assessment and management. Carry out regular risk assessments and then decide how you’re going to mitigate the risks you’ve identified. That could mean a change in in working practices, training, or special equipment.
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  Keep everyone informed. If you’ve got 5 people or more on your team (including yourself) you’ll need a written health & safety policy. You also need one if you want MCS or PAS 2023 certification. In any case, you’ll need to keep everyone you work with up to date with your latest H&S guidance.
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  Check that everything’s working. It’s no good having policies and procedures in place if they’re ignored. You need to regularly review training, accident reporting and other processes – and act on the results.
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  Access to a suitable Competent Person. Check out our Competent Person page for more details.