Making and Implementing Health and Safety Arrangements

Making Arrangements and Putting Them Into Practice

The employer must make and give effect to appropriate arrangements for the effective planning, organisation control monitoring; and review of the preventive and protective measures identified in his risk assessments as necessary for his compliance with general duties, other health and safety legislation and fire safety legislation.

Records

The employer must, if he employs five or more staff, record the health and safety arrangements he makes.

To comply with this duty, many employers have extended their health and safety policies and developed these into health and safety management manuals to reflect the more detailed health and safety arrangements now required.

Some employers are going further and developing health and safety management systems to meet legal requirements, the HSE guidance publication HSG65, "Successful Health and Safety Management", and the standards reflected in BS 18004:2008 , "Guide to Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems".

"Appropriate"

Appropriate arrangements are, in effect, the systems and procedures that will work taking account of the nature of the employer's activities and the size of his undertaking. In small firms involved in a low risk activity these need not be so detailed as in a large organisation involved in many different high risk and low risk activities.

Making and Giving Effect to Arrangements

Making arrangements means designing the appropriate systems and procedures so that measures that need to be taken can be planned, organised, controlled, monitored and reviewed effectively.

Giving effect to arrangements means testing, modifying as necessary and establishing the systems and procedures that have been designed so that the relevant people know how to use them and do use them to monitor and review the effectiveness of existing measures, and introduce new measures or improvements to existing measures whenever required.

Planning

The employer must have arrangements for planning his preventive and protective measures. Planning involves a systematic approach which identifies priorities and sets objectives. Whenever possible, elimination of risk will be planned through careful selection and design of facilities, equipment and processes. If risks cannot be planned out, minimum risk will be planned through specification of effective physical control measures.

Organisation

The employer must have arrangements for organisation of his health and safety measures. Organisation involves a coherent structure of responsibilities, communication and accountability with the aim of ensuring there is a progressive improvement in health and safety performance.

Control

The employer must have arrangements for control of his preventive and protective measures. Control is ensuring that the decisions for achieving and promoting high standards of health and safety are being implemented as planned.

Monitoring and Review

The employer must have arrangements for monitoring and review of his health and safety measures. Just as with quality management, continuing improvement in health and safety can only happen through the constant development of policy, approaches to implementation and techniques of risk control.