Risk assessment in health and safety is the foundation the other documents stand on. The duty: Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, cited below, requires every employer to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees, and regulation 3(6) requires an employer with five or more employees to record the significant findings and any group of employees especially at risk. The method: The HSE's guidance, cited below, gives risk assessment as five steps: identify hazards, assess the risks, control the risks, record your findings, review the controls, and says that if you employ 5 or more people you must record your significant findings. Everything else reads from it: the method statement applies its controls, the toolbox talk repeats them, the incident investigation tests them, the audit checks them. The risk assessment template on this site prints the assessment, free and without an account.
The duty and the method
Every employer, suitable and sufficient, recorded at five or more employees; found on a walk, assessed, controlled, recorded, reviewed. The template prints the record in that shape. The walk is the assessment; the page is the record.
What reads from it
The method statement places each control at a step; the toolbox talk repeats one control a week; the incident investigation asks whether the hazard was assessed and the control in place; the audit checks the rows.
What breaks without it
A method with no assessment behind it applies controls nobody decided; an investigation with no assessment to test has nothing to find; an audit with no assessment to read starts at the first finding.
Kept
Against the job, reviewed on change and after incidents. DailyLogDesk Pro keeps it with the documents that read from it; the template prints it. From the vendors' own pricing pages, cited below: SafetyCulture lists its Premium plan at $29 per seat per month billed monthly or $24 billed annually, with a free plan for small teams; Contractor Foreman lists its Basic plan at $49 per month for one user. DailyLogDesk Pro is $29 per month for the whole site team.
Questions people ask about risk assessment in health and safety
Is risk assessment the whole of health and safety?
It is the method the rest depends on; the controls, the training and the records are the rest.
Who does it in a small business?
The competent person, on the site, with the operative; the owner signs.
Is the template free?
Yes, without an account.