Every employer is under a statutory duty to arrange for a "competent person" to assess all risks arising at the workplace, or created by work activities. Some risks are of a general nature, but others will need to be considered against more specialised legislation.

The more common subjects that give rise to an assessment duty are:

	For General risks (Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations)
	Where exposure to substances may cause damage to health (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations)
	At workstations where VDUs are used (Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations)
	Where hazardous lifting or carrying tasks are undertaken (Manual Handling Operations Regulations)
	In noisy environments which could cause damage to hearing (Noise at Work Regulations)
	Fire safety The fire risk assessment should consider the means of raising the alarm, arrangements for safe evacuation, fire safety equipment and signage.

Other specific requirements for assessments include: selection and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and assessing the presence, type and location of asbestos.

We can arrange for a qualified safety practitioner to carry out risk assessments on your behalf. Our assessment may take the form of a general risk review, or may involve a more detailed analysis of a specific hazard.

All assessments must be reviewed from time to time, to ensure that they remain valid. For this reason we encourage you to nominate a "shadow assessor" to accompany our consultant for part of the exercise.

Your nominee will pick up sufficient basic understanding to confidently deal with many of the issues that could arise in the future. As an alternative we can, if you prefer, carry out periodical reviews on your behalf.

We have our own standard report forms for all types of risk assessment, and these can be adapted to suit your own needs at no extra cost. The copyright of our forms will be waived so that you can continue with the same system once we have finished on site.

If you already use your own style of paperwork, we will be pleased to work to that format.