When To Update Your Health And Safety Policy

Every business should have a health and safety policy, but is yours up to date? Since it's the start of a new year, this month is a great time to review and update your health and safety policy.

Your health and safety policy sets out the health and safety arrangements for the business and provides important information to your staff. Putting your health and safety in place isn't the end of the matter, though. You can't just write a policy and file it away under 'done'.

It should be regularly reviewed and kept up to date.

A health and safety policy is a legal requirement. If you employ 5 or more people, legally, you must have a written health and safety policy.

If you employ fewer than 5 people, you can get away with a health and safety policy statement. Although, especially if you work in a high-risk environment, you really should consider a full health and safety policy regardless.

Find out more about health and safety policies and what should be included in our post, what is a health and safety policy?

If you have a health and safety policy in place, great. Bonus points if you make sure all your employees know about it (they should!).

But when was the last time you reviewed your policy? When was it last updated? Last week, last month, last year? Has your business grown since then, or changed the way it works? Has the law changed?

Why should you update your health and safety policy?

Before we look at how frequently you need to review your health and safety policy, we need to know why. Why should you review your policy? Why might it need updating?

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations require that where an employer employs 5 or more employees, a written health and safety policy document is produced. It is also a requirement that the health and safety policy is kept up to date.

5.—(1) Every employer shall make and give effect to such arrangements as are appropriate, having regard to the nature of his activities and the size of his undertaking, for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures.

Your health and safety policy is one of the key health and safety documents within your organisation. It is usually the first health and safety document people will look to when joining your business, and it is also a document that is regularly requested by potential clients, investors, stakeholders, and insurance companies. So if it goes out of date, people will notice.

You might fail a health and safety accreditation, or lose out on a tender bid, or just look bad.

If your health and safety policy was fine when you wrote it, then what makes it go out of date? Two key things can happen over time that will affect your health and safety policy:

• Changes to health and safety regulations
• Changes to your business

Health and safety regulations get updated from time to time, and new laws get introduced. Your business may need to alter the procedures and arrangements in place to comply with these changes. Your policy should be updated to reflect that.

A policy will only be effective if you and your staff follow it and review it regularly.

Your business will also evolve and change. You might add new products and services. New technologies and procedures may be introduced. Your team might grow or shrink. You might outsource or insource certain requirements.

Your policy will need to cover these changes and any new arrangements or responsibilities you have to keep people safe.

How often should a health and safety policy be reviewed?

Now we know why we need to update our policy; you should regularly review it to see if and when it needs to be updated.

Your health and safety policy must be kept:

1. Up to date with current regulations
2. Relevant to your business

If your policy is out of date because it refers to old regulations, then it's not likely to comply with current legal requirements. If it's not relevant to your business, then it's not much use for the activities you carry out.

So, when should you review and update your health and safety policy?

• Review your health and safety policy at least annually
• Update your health and safety policy as necessary

Reviewing your policy at least every year allows you to check what's changed and what needs updating. You can carry out this review at the start of each year, in January, or at the start of the financial year in April. You could pick any time of year that suits your business. If you're usually quiet in December or August, that might be a good time to do it for you.

During your review, you might find that not a whole lot has changed and no updates are required. Other times, you might find that entire sections or topics need to be brought up to date.

We say review at least annually because there are times when you may need to update your policy sooner. Reasons for this could include:

• Changes to regulations
• Changes to your business
• Failings or problems with your policy

Changes to regulations

Changes to health and safety regulations usually happen twice a year, in April and October. Don't panic, changes don't happen to every regulation twice a year. But each year, a few pieces of health and safety law are amended, revised, or new ones are introduced.

With the law changing regularly, you should check frequently (at least twice a year) if any of the legislation changes might affect you. If there are changes to regulations that do, then review your policy to make sure it complies with the changes. Update it if it doesn't.

Changes to your business

What about other changes to your business?

For example, if there are changes to your work procedures. As your business changes, develops, and grows, so should your health and safety policy to address changing risks and safety issues.

If your policy is out of date, it won't comply with legal requirements. Keep your health and safety policy up to date with changes in your business as well as changes in the law.

Failings in your current policy

You should also review your health and safety policy if it is found that any health and safety management procedures are failing, and adapt your procedures as needed to keep your workforce safe.

You may identify failings through accident or near-miss statistics. Or, you might notice through monitoring that procedures are not being followed or have been altered because they are unsuitable. Review the policy and check if it needs updating and improving.

Summary

Review your health and safety policy at least annually to keep it up to date. We recommend reviewing your health and safety policy twice a year, just before April and October. These are the times of the year when changes to health and safety laws come into effect, and if any of these changes are relevant to your business, you should update your policy.

During these scheduled reviews, you can consider any other changes that are happening in the way you work, and any impact these changes have on your policy and procedures. If you know there are major changes planned in the near future, in your work procedures or activities, you can also review your policy to check it covers these.

When reviewing your health and safety policy, you can also check on health and safety performance, and decide if any arrangements need to be strengthened, simplified, or improved to keep your team safe.

And when should you update your health and safety policy? Only when you need to!

The purpose of these periodic reviews is to check if your policy needs updating. If you find it does, then you should make the necessary changes and communicate these with your team.

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