'Keep it simple' on risk assessments

The Health and Safety Executive added that in order to help firms achieve the right balance, it had revamped its risk assessment guidance to spell out in plain English just what was, and what was not, expected.

The guide 'Five Steps to Risk Assessment', which was first published in 1993 had been simplified to make it "even easier for normal business people, not just health and safety experts, to use."

The HSE added that the revised booklet also placed greater emphasis on making sure that decisions were actually put into practice.

'Sensible safety'

The HSE's deputy chief executive, Jonathan Rees, said: "We want to save lives, not tie businesses up in red tape. Good risk assessment is the way to achieve this.

"Risk assessment is at the heart of sensible health and safety. We believe it should be a practical way of protecting people from real harm and suffering, not a bureaucratic back-covering exercise. On its own paperwork never saved a life, it needs to be a means to an end, resulting in actions that protect people in practice."

Mr Rees added: "I hope that this new, more straightforward guidance will help managers understand what's expected of them and get more focus on the kind of risks that cause real harm and suffering - the ones that killed 220 workers last year and resulted in 35 million working days being lost.

"This guide takes the user through the process step-by-step with the minimum of fuss to achieve this aim."

Priorities right?

John Phillips, Norwich Union Risk Services training and consultancy manager, told us: "Risk assessment is about spotting the things that could lead to injury or ill health, and then deciding how likely it is.

"The things that might lead to an incident are normally called 'hazards', while the likelihood of them occurring together with the level of harm they might cause actually determines the 'risk'. There can be a tendency among some to concentrate on the hazards and forget about evaluating the risk."

He added: "It is essential that trivial risks do not get in the way of tackling those that could have significant consequences. Action is of course the key, with risks rated as 'high', or those that could affect the most people, being the priority."

The 11-page HSE booklet, which is supported by four examples of what a risk assessment might look like, is available to download free of charge from the HSE website - see link above/right.