Best health and safety software for UK SMEs in 2026: 8 options compared

The right health and safety software for a UK SME records what your work produces and is read by someone competent to act on it. For a small team, Breathe's Health & Safety module and HS Direct's Safety First package hold risk assessments and an accident log. For checks and incident reports made on a phone, look at Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture), Notify and Evotix Professional. For software and advice from one supplier, Croner BrightSafe comes with a 24/7 advice line, and our own Opus Compliance Cloud can come with a dedicated consultant.

Whichever you choose, the software holds the records. Acting on them is still a job for people, including the competent person the law requires you to appoint.

How this list was put together

Seven of the eight products here ranked on the first page of Google UK results for "best health and safety software uk" on 6 October 2026, or were named in a roundup that did. Each description comes from the vendor's own website, read that day. We compared what each one records, whether advice comes with it, where data is held, how it works on site and how it handles several sites.

The eighth is ours. Opus Safety sells Compliance Cloud and we wrote the list, which is a conflict of interest, so our own product is last. We did not trial the software, and we have left out prices, ratings, review scores, customer numbers and performance claims, because we have no way to check them. The order runs from the simplest setup to the broadest and ranks nothing.

1. Breathe Health & Safety, for small teams that already run HR in Breathe

Breathe sells HR software, and Health & Safety is a module inside it, built in Breathe's words for people managing safety as part of their role. It holds risk assessments with review cycles and version control, an incident log any employee can add hazards and near misses to, first aider and fire warden certificates, and a record of who has acknowledged which policy.

You need Breathe HR to use it, and you can give an outside health and safety consultant access without exposing your people data. Breathe says your data is held in a London data centre.

Consider it if safety is one of several jobs for whoever owns it and you want safety records next to staff records. Plant and vehicles that need pre-use checks are better served by the inspection-led tools further down.

2. HS Direct Safety First, for templates, an accident book and phone support

HS Direct is a Sheffield company that has worked in health and safety and HR since 2004. Its cloud-based Safety First package runs on a computer, tablet or phone. It includes risk assessment and method statement templates, construction phase plan templates, an electronic accident and incident book, training scheduling and notice of legislation changes.

Telephone support from HS Direct's consultants is part of the package, and the company also helps with accreditations such as CHAS, Constructionline and SafeContractor.

Consider it if you run a contracting or trade business and need documents you can adapt, such as RAMS, plus somebody to ring.

3. Croner BrightSafe, for software with a 24/7 advice line

BrightSafe is the health and safety software from Croner, which also sells HR, employment law and health and safety services. Croner's page describes risk assessments built from scratch or from a template library, accident records and investigations, task delegation, e-learning, and document storage that includes policies Croner writes for you.

An app, BrightSafe On The Go, lets you check tasks and upload photos of hazards on site. The software comes with a 24/7 advice line run by Croner's UK-based team.

Consider it if you want the software and a phone line to an adviser from one supplier, and your documents need as much attention as your site records.

4. Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture), for mobile inspections and checklists

Mitti is SafetyCulture under a new name. The company's changelog of 10 August 2026 describes the same platform and the same team.

Mitti calls itself an operations system for frontline teams. Inspections run from checklists, which an AI assistant can draft, and anyone can raise an issue from a photo or a voice note. Modules cover investigations, training, lone workers, contractors, asset maintenance and documents that work offline, and benchmarking compares sites.

Mitti's help centre says data is stored with Amazon Web Services in the US, Ireland or Australia, generally whichever is nearest for organisations created since March 2022. The same page says user identity and product analytics data are held in the US whichever region you are in.

Consider it if your work is mostly recurring checks across several sites, done by people who live on their phones. It covers quality and assets as well as safety, so expect to build it around your own safety system.

5. Notify, for modular incident reporting and audits that work offline

Notify Technology was founded in 2017 and has offices in Newcastle upon Tyne and Cluj in Romania. It sells safety software in modules you pick: risk assessments, method statements, action tracking, audits and inspections, incident management and document management.

Staff report hazards, near misses and accidents, or complete audits, on a phone, tablet or desktop with no internet needed, adding photos or voice notes. Managers are notified when an incident is logged, and AI drafts incident summaries. Notify's security page says the platform runs on Amazon Web Services and that the company holds Cyber Essentials certification.

Consider it if getting reports in from the shop floor is your weak point and you want to start with one or two modules.

6. Evotix Professional, for mid-sized teams managing contractors and assets

Evotix Professional is built on Evotix's Assure platform and aimed, in Evotix's words, at mid-market teams. It covers eight areas in one system: incident management, risk management, audits and inspections, training management, contractor management, asset management, behaviour-based safety and environmental management.

The mobile app works online and offline, and QR codes and shared access give staff quicker ways to report. Evotix has offices in London and Manchester, among others.

Consider it if you are at the larger end of SME, contractors work on your sites regularly, and you want environmental records in the same system as safety.

7. C365Cloud, for health and safety inside property and estates compliance

C365Cloud is a cloud-hosted compliance management system, founded in 2010 and developed by its own in-house team. The vendor's overview page says it runs on Amazon Web Services. The health and safety module covers accident, incident and near-miss reporting, which C365Cloud describes as supporting RIDDOR requirements, plus audits and risk assessments including display screen equipment, dynamic and role risk assessments.

Other modules cover permits to work, site logbooks for water hygiene and fire safety, and training records for competent persons. Modules for resident access, pub managers and care homes show its focus: compliance across an estate of buildings.

Consider it if your health and safety sits inside property compliance across many buildings. A single-site business would use a small part of it.

8. Opus Compliance Cloud, our own platform, with or without a consultant

This one is ours, so weigh it accordingly. Opus Compliance Cloud is the platform our own consultants use day to day. It is a newer system and is still being added to.

Operatives scan QR codes on your assets, which we supply, to complete the right pre-start checklist. Contractors, agency and seasonal staff are onboarded through a secure temporary link with no account setup. Role requirements you set once give each person their training, e-learning, checklists such as DSE or health surveillance, and playbooks such as a new starter induction. Asset type requirements do the same for equipment: add an asset and the platform adds the inspections and checklists that type of asset needs. Anyone can log an incident by QR, and our page describes every report as RIDDOR-ready and audit-logged. Audits can be scored, and checklists and report templates can be built to your own format.

Each manager works from an inbox that ranks open tasks by severity and age, so the most serious and the longest-waiting come first. Across several sites, a Site Snapshot shows open incidents, actions, overdue training and outstanding checks, filtered by site, role or asset type. Health surveillance data sits in a separate, authorisation-protected area, and you can export all your data on demand. Contractor management and RAMS are available as add-ons.

Software Only gives you the platform, configured by our team, for businesses with health and safety capability in-house. The Opus Safety Partnership adds a dedicated consultant working in the same platform, so audit findings become tracked tasks.

Consider it if you run several sites in the sectors it was built around: builders merchants, warehousing and logistics, manufacturing and engineering, garden centres, metal stockholding, and childcare and nurseries. Look elsewhere if you are a small, low-risk office. Details are on the Compliance Cloud page.

What stays with you, whichever software you choose

It cannot be your competent person. Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires you to appoint one or more competent persons to help you comply. Regulation 7(5) of those Regulations defines competence as "sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities", which describes a person, and regulation 7(8) of the 1999 Regulations says a competent person in your own employment is to be appointed in preference to one from outside. The 1999 Regulations extend to England, Wales and Scotland; Northern Ireland has its own equivalent in regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000. Without that competence in-house, an outsourced competent person is one answer, and we have written about whether you need one at all.

The RIDDOR report is yours to make. Regulation 12 of RIDDOR 2013 requires a record of reportable incidents, reportable diagnoses and over-three-day injuries, kept for at least three years, and regulation 12(4) of RIDDOR 2013 accepts a record kept for another purpose if it covers the recordable injuries and holds the particulars in Part 2 of Schedule 1 to RIDDOR 2013. A software incident log can be that record. The report itself is made through HSE's online reporting system by the responsible person, which for your workers is you as their employer. RIDDOR 2013 applies in England, Wales and Scotland, and Northern Ireland has its own separate regulations. Our RIDDOR guide covers what is reportable.

Records can outlast the contract. Regulation 11 of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 requires the health record of each employee under health surveillance to be kept for at least 40 years from the last entry. Those Regulations extend to England, Wales and Scotland, and Northern Ireland's own COSHH regulations set the same period. Check how you get your data out before you sign.

How to choose between them

What each vendor's own pages say, read on 6 October 2026. A blank in the last column means the pages we read gave no location, so ask. Our own row's location comes from our Compliance Cloud team, 3 November 2026.

Product	What its pages say it records	Health and safety advice	Where its pages say data is held
Breathe Health & Safety	Risk assessments, incidents, first aider and fire warden certificates, policy sign-off	Your own consultant can be given access	London data centre
HS Direct Safety First	Risk assessments and method statements, construction phase plans, accident and incident book, training schedule	Telephone support from HS Direct's consultants
Croner BrightSafe	Risk assessments, accidents and investigations, documents, tasks, e-learning	24/7 advice line
Mitti	Inspections, issues, investigations, training, assets, contractors, documents	None described on the pages we read	US, Ireland or Australia
Notify	Risk assessments, method statements, incidents, audits, actions, documents	None described on the pages we read	Amazon Web Services, region not stated
Evotix Professional	Incidents, risks, audits, training, contractors, assets, behaviour, environment	None described on the pages we read
C365Cloud	Incidents, audits, risk assessments, permits to work, logbooks, training records	Implementation services include a gap analysis of your compliance documents	Amazon Web Services, region not stated
Opus Compliance Cloud	Tasks, training, e-learning, incidents, asset checks, scored audits, health surveillance area	Optional dedicated consultant through the Partnership	Rotterdam, Netherlands

Then ask five questions of any shortlist.

1. What does your work produce? Forklifts produce pre-use checks, which suit an inspection-led tool. An office produces a handful of risk assessments, which a template package can hold.
2. Who reads the records? An overdue-examination alert helps only if somebody competent acts on it, so check an outside consultant can log in.
3. Will people on site use it? Agency and seasonal staff need a way in without an account, and weak signal calls for offline working.
4. How does it handle a second site? Look for filters and comparisons by site.
5. Can you get everything out? Ask for a full export in a usable format.

If you would like a view on which of these suits your business, including when the answer is somebody else's product, speak to an Opus consultant.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best health and safety software for small businesses in the UK? The one that fits what your work produces. A small, low-risk business can manage with Breathe's Health & Safety module, HS Direct's Safety First package or HSE's free risk assessment template. Plant, vehicles or several sites point towards Mitti, Notify, Evotix Professional or Opus Compliance Cloud.

What are some good health and safety apps available in the UK? Mitti, Notify and Evotix Professional all have mobile apps for reporting and inspections, and Notify and Evotix say theirs work offline. BrightSafe customers get Croner's BrightSafe On The Go app, and Opus Compliance Cloud runs checks and incident reports from QR codes.

What is the best software for health and safety risk assessment? HS Direct and Croner BrightSafe both offer template libraries, and Breathe adds review reminders and staff acknowledgement. Any template still needs adapting to your workplace: HSE, which publishes a free risk assessment template, warns that copying an example and adding your company name would not satisfy the law.

Does health and safety software make my business compliant? It helps you show what you have done, and the duties stay with you. Judging whether a control is adequate takes competence. Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires you to appoint one or more competent persons to help you comply, in England, Wales and Scotland, and regulation 7 of the Northern Ireland 2000 Regulations does the same there.

Can health and safety software report a RIDDOR incident to HSE for me? In England, Wales and Scotland the report is made by the responsible person, which for your workers is you as their employer, through HSE's online reporting system. Software can hold your RIDDOR record, because regulation 12(4) of RIDDOR 2013 accepts a record kept for another purpose if it covers the recordable injuries and carries the required particulars.

Do I need health and safety software at all? Only if it helps you. The duties on this page ask for records. Regulation 3(6) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires you to record the significant findings of your risk assessment once you employ five or more people, in England, Wales and Scotland, and it sets no format for that record. Software earns its place with several sites, many people to train or equipment that needs regular checks.

Where is my health and safety data stored? It depends on the vendor. Breathe says London, and Mitti says the US, Ireland or Australia. Notify and C365Cloud name Amazon Web Services without a region, and Opus Compliance Cloud data is held in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. The other three gave no location on the pages we read. Ask before you sign, especially for health surveillance records.