Health And Safety
Risk Assessment
Assessing and controlling risk is probably the most important part of every successful health and safety management system. Although
nearly all current legislation requires assessments to be made and records of significant risks to be kept, we know that many employers
experience difficulty in carrying out the process. This need not be so, the attached sheets are reproduced from our 'Health and Safety Workbook' and offer a simple way of carrying out your
assessments. They are easy to update when there is a change of process, personnel or materials and can be made available to an
inspector if requested.
There is one risk assessment sheet for each of five areas of risk, they can be freely copied so that a separate sheet is completed for each
hazard which could put people at risk of injury or damage to health. The sheets need to be used when a hazard has been identified that
cannot be made safe straight away.
The Risk Assessment Process
1. Identify the Hazard
By looking at a workplace, a work task or a process and by talking to the people who carry out the work you will be able to identify those
things which could cause harm or damage. These are hazards and will be different for each area inspected. The hazard indicators on each
sheet will give you some idea of the sort of things to look for, there may be others.
The description and location of each hazard identified should be entered in the boxes on the left hand side of the sheet.
2. Assess the Risk
You will need to make a judgment about whether harm is likely to be caused by each hazard identified and if so, who could be affected
and how severe that harm is likely to be.
The tables in the centre of each sheet will help with this judgment. Tick the relevant boxes in tables A,B,C,D and carry out the multiplication
sum to give a number indicating the urgency with which you need to take action to control the risk.
3. Control the Risk
By far the most important part of the process. This is how you stop accidents from happening and prevent injury, illness or damage. Having
identified the hazard and determined the risk you must now decide what you need to do to minimise the possibility of harm.
You may have to carry out short term solutions until you can implement a longer term plan. You need to consider the seriousness and probability
of harm and balance it against the cost of corrective action. Whatever you decide to do you will need to monitor it to make sure that it is working
and to make sure that all the people who could be affected have been told about the problem and what they must do to look after their own and
other people's health and safety.
You will be able to give brief details of your intended solutions in the box on the right hand side of the sheet. The smaller boxes at the bottom
of the sheet can be use to indicate that information has been passed on, that training has been carried out and that controls have been put in
place.
 The documents on this website can be downloaded and are published using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). To view or print these documents, Adobe's Acrobat PDF reader is required which can be downloaded from Adobe Systems' website (external link).
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