The North West has one of the densest concentrations of manufacturing, logistics and engineering businesses in the country. The corridor running from Warrington and Widnes through Runcorn, Trafford Park and out towards Wigan and St Helens is full of firms employing between ten and two hundred people — precisely the size band where health and safety is most likely to be under-resourced.
These are businesses with real, physical risk. They are also businesses where nobody’s full-time job is health and safety.
This checklist is written for that situation. It is not exhaustive, and it deliberately avoids listing every regulation that might conceivably apply. It covers the things that, in our experience, an inspector asks for first and that businesses most often cannot produce.
First: work out who inspects you
This determines the kind of scrutiny to expect, and it surprises people.
Enforcement is split between the HSE and local authority environmental health teams. The HSE covers factories, farms, construction sites, mines, schools and colleges, hospitals and nursing homes, gas, electricity and water undertakings, fairgrounds, offshore installations, and central and local government premises. Local authorities — Warrington Borough Council, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, St Helens, Trafford and so on — cover offices (other than government offices), shops, hotels, restaurants, leisure premises, pubs and clubs, nurseries and playgroups, privately owned museums, places of worship, and sheltered accommodation and care homes.
If you manufacture, process, fabricate or assemble anything, you are HSE-enforced. Two consequences follow. First, HSE inspections are increasingly health-focused rather than purely safety-focused. Second, HSE can recover its costs from you under the Fee for Intervention scheme at £188 per hour where it finds a material breach — local authorities cannot.
The documented foundations
A written health and safety policy. Required by section 2(3) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 if you employ five or more people. It should set out your statement of intent, the organisation (who is responsible for what, by name and role), and the arrangements (how you actually manage each significant risk). Review it annually and whenever the business changes materially.
The common failure is a policy downloaded from a template, signed by a director who has never read it, describing arrangements the business does not have.
Risk assessments. Required under Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, with significant findings recorded where you employ five or more people. They must be suitable and sufficient, which means specific to your operations.
Test yours honestly: pick one at random and walk to the area it covers. Does it describe what you can see?
An appointed competent person. Regulation 7 requires every employer to appoint one or more competent persons to assist in meeting statutory duties. Competence is defined as sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities. Document who is appointed and what their scope is.
Employers’ liability insurance. Required by the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, minimum cover of £5 million, with the certificate accessible to employees.
An accident book and RIDDOR arrangements. You need to record accidents, and you need to know who reports what under RIDDOR 2013 and within what timescale. Deaths and specified injuries are reportable without delay and by report within 10 days. Over-seven-day incapacitation injuries are reportable within 15 days. Certain occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences are also reportable.
Under-reporting is common and is treated seriously. In 2024/25 there were 59,219 employee injuries reported under RIDDOR, against an estimated 680,000 self-reported workplace injuries.
The statutory examinations
These are binary. Either the certificate is in date or it is not, and they are usually the first documents requested.
- Lifting equipment (LOLER 1998). Thorough examination at least every 6 months for equipment used to lift persons and for lifting accessories; at least every 12 months for other lifting equipment, or in accordance with an examination scheme.
- Local exhaust ventilation (COSHH Regulation 9). Thorough examination and test at least every 14 months, and more frequently for certain processes.
- Pressure systems (PSSR 2000). A written scheme of examination, and examination in accordance with it.
- Gas appliances (Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998). Annual safety check on gas appliances and flues by a Gas Safe registered engineer, where applicable.
- Electrical installations. Fixed wiring inspection and testing at appropriate intervals; portable appliance testing on a risk-based frequency (there is no fixed legal interval, despite common belief).
- Fire safety. A fire risk assessment under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, plus maintenance and testing of detection, alarm, emergency lighting and firefighting equipment.
Occupational health: the area most often neglected
This is where inspection focus has moved, and where small businesses are least prepared.
The scale of the problem is in the national figures. In 2024/25, 1.9 million working people in Great Britain were suffering from a work-related illness. Around 964,000 had work-related stress, depression or anxiety, and 511,000 had a work-related musculoskeletal disorder. Work-related illness and injury accounted for 40.1 million lost working days. The estimated annual cost of injuries and ill health arising from current working conditions was £22.9 billion in 2023/24.
What you need in place:
Noise. Under the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005, assess exposure where it is likely to reach the lower action value of 80 dB(A). Reduce noise at source so far as is reasonably practicable. Provide hearing protection from the lower action value on request, and enforce its use from the upper action value of 85 dB(A). Provide health surveillance for those regularly exposed above the upper action value.
Hazardous substances. COSHH assessments for every substance and process that generates a hazardous exposure — including dust and fume generated by the process, not just products you buy in. Controls above the level of PPE. LEV maintained and tested. Face fit testing where RPE is used.
Vibration. Under the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005, exposure action value of 2.5 m/s² A(8) and exposure limit value of 5 m/s² A(8) for hand-arm vibration. Calculate exposure from actual trigger times. Health surveillance where the action value is likely to be exceeded.
Manual handling and MSDs. Assessment under the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, with controls built into how the job is done rather than into a training record.
Work-related stress. Falls within the general risk assessment duty. The HSE has signalled that it intends to treat failure to manage psychosocial risks with the same seriousness as physical safety failures, and expects employers to work to the six Management Standards: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.
Making it stick
Documents do not manage risk. Three habits do more than any folder:
Close out actions. Every audit, assessment and investigation should generate actions with an owner and a date, and those should be tracked to completion. An open action from two years ago is evidence that you knew about a risk and did nothing.
Consult employees. Required under the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996 or the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977. It is also the fastest route to finding out which guard is a nuisance and which task everyone does the quick way.
Investigate near misses. A near miss is a free lesson. Most serious injuries were preceded by one.
A ten-minute self-audit
Answer these honestly. Anything you cannot answer in under a minute is a gap worth addressing.
- Where is your written health and safety policy, and when was it last reviewed?
- Who is your appointed competent person, and where is that recorded?
- Are your statutory examinations all in date?
- Have you assessed noise, dust, vibration and manual handling — and acted above the level of PPE?
- Who is on health surveillance, and when were they last seen?
- How many open actions do you have from your last audit or assessment?
- What was your last near miss, and what changed as a result?
- If an inspector arrived unannounced, who would deal with them?
Soteria (UK) Ltd is based in Warrington and supports SMEs across Cheshire, the North West and throughout the UK and Ireland. Our consultants are Chartered Health and Safety Practitioners registered on the OSHCR, offering a fresh, pragmatic approach to health, safety and environmental compliance — with advice and support available 24-7-365.
Call 01925 626283 or email info@soteriauk.co.uk.
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