A member of staff goes up a stepladder to change a bulb in the back of a café. She has done it fifty times. On the fifty-first the ladder moves on a wet tile, she puts a hand out, and breaks her wrist. She is off for nine weeks.
Everything that happens next depends on things that were decided long before she climbed the ladder: whether anyone had thought about that floor, whether there was a better ladder, and whether the business has the insurance it is legally required to have.
The duty is on you, and it is worded broadly
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places a duty on every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of employees, and to conduct the business so that people who are not employees are not exposed to risk. That includes customers, delivery drivers and contractors.
Reasonably practicable is a balancing test. It weighs the risk against the cost, time and trouble of controlling it, and the more serious the risk the less the cost argument is worth. It does not mean doing everything conceivable. It does mean you cannot leave an obvious hazard because sorting it out is inconvenient.
Directors and senior managers have personal exposure. Section 37 of the Act allows prosecution of an individual where an offence by the company was committed with their consent or connivance, or was attributable to their neglect. Sentencing for health and safety offences follows a guideline that scales fines to turnover and culpability, which is why the fines for larger companies have risen so sharply since 2016.
Risk assessment is a walk round with a pen, not a document you buy
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to employees and others. If you have five or more employees, you must record the significant findings.
The useful version is five steps and takes an afternoon:
- Walk the premises and identify what could realistically cause harm. Wet floors, stairs, heat, electricity, lifting, machinery, traffic in a yard, violence at a till, lone working at closing time.
- Decide who might be harmed and how, including new starters, young workers, pregnant workers and anyone working alone.
- Decide what you will do about each one, working down from removing the hazard, through engineering controls, to procedures, with personal protective equipment as the last resort rather than the first.
- Write down the significant findings and who is doing what by when.
- Review it when something changes, and after anything goes wrong.
A generic template downloaded and filed unread is worse than nothing, because it proves you considered the risk and did not act on it. HSE's own published guidance for small businesses is free and sector-specific, which is a better starting point than a purchased folder.
What HSE inspectors and local authority officers look at in practice is narrow and consistent: whether you have identified your real risks, whether the controls exist on the day rather than on paper, whether staff have been told and trained, whether accidents get recorded and acted on, and whether equipment is maintained. Enforcement in a shop, an office or a restaurant usually sits with the local authority rather than HSE, though HSE covers factories, construction and higher-risk work.
Reporting is a legal duty with a clock on it
RIDDOR, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, requires the responsible person to report specified events to the enforcing authority.
Reportable to HSE are: deaths; specified injuries, which include fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes, amputations, loss of sight, crush injuries, serious burns and injuries from working in an enclosed space; injuries to a worker resulting in more than seven consecutive days away from work or unable to do their normal duties, not counting the day of the accident; injuries to members of the public taken from the scene to hospital for treatment; certain occupational diseases; and dangerous occurrences, which are near-misses of defined types.
The broken wrist above is a specified injury and a seven-day absence, and it is reportable. The report goes in without delay for specified injuries and within fifteen days for over-seven-day injuries. Keep an accident book as well, because you have to keep a record of anything over three days even where no report is required, and because it is the only evidence you will have if a claim arrives three years later.
Employers' liability insurance is not optional
The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires almost every employer to hold employers' liability insurance covering at least £5m, though policies are commonly written at £10m. The certificate must be available to employees, which in practice means displayed or accessible electronically.
Trading without it is an offence and can attract a penalty for each day you are uninsured. Some very small companies with a single employee who owns at least 50% of the share capital are exempt, but the exemption is narrower than people assume and worth checking rather than relying on.
Public liability insurance is not compulsory in most trades, but the café customer who slips on the same tile has a claim, and without cover that claim lands on the business.
Whether the injured employee succeeds in a personal injury claim turns on negligence and breach of duty, and on what a reasonable employer would have done about a wet tiled floor and a stepladder. It will turn on your records. The risk assessment you did not write and the training you gave informally are both, in evidence terms, things that did not happen.
Where this shows up in the game
Business Baron treats safety as a slow variable rather than an event. Neglected maintenance, untrained staff and long shifts raise the chance of an incident that costs you wages, an insurance excess, a visit from the local authority, and a reputation that takes a year to rebuild. Nothing about it is dramatic until it is, which is the point.