New HSE risk assessment guide offers practical advice
1 min read
To help companies spend less time crossing 'Is' and dotting ' Ts', the HSE has issued a revamped risk assessment guide.
The guide features examples that spell out, in plain English, what is and what is not expected. The guidance, 'Five Steps to Risk Assessment', first published in 1993, has been revised and simplified to make it easier for business people, not just health and safety experts, to use. It also places greater emphasis on making sure that decisions are actually put into practice.
"We want to save lives, not tie businesses up in red tape; good risk assessment is the way to achieve this," said the HSE's deputy chief executive, Jonathan Rees. "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."
The 11-page booklet is available free online at www.hse.gov.uk/risk (see link below).
