How to tell whether a health and safety consultant is genuinely competent

The law names no qualification that a health and safety consultant must hold. Regulation 7(5) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 treats a person as competent where they have "sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities" to enable them properly to assist in undertaking the measures you need to take to comply with health and safety law. In practice, the evidence to look for is a level 6 qualification such as the NEBOSH National Diploma or a health and safety degree, a senior grade with a professional body such as Chartered Member of IOSH (CMIOSH), current professional indemnity insurance, and experience of operations like yours. You can check every one of those yourself, and this guide shows how.

What qualifications should a health and safety consultant have?

Regulation 7(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires you to appoint one or more competent persons to help you meet your health and safety duties. Regulation 7(5) of those Regulations defines competence by what the person brings: sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities. It names no qualification and no register.

The 1999 Regulations extend to England, Wales and Scotland. In Northern Ireland the same test sits in regulation 7(5) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000, in the same words.

HSE's guidance on using a health and safety consultant or adviser turns the legal test into two checks for a buyer. The consultant should have "evidence of relevant training and knowledge, such as formal qualifications or practical experience of providing advice in your industry or area of work", and they should be adequately insured.

HSE's page on what competence means adds that competence only needs to be proportionate to the job and the place of work, and contrasts an office with a construction site. So the right consultant for a ten-person office may be the wrong one for a yard with forklifts and a paint line.

If someone in your own workforce is competent, regulation 7(8) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 says that person must be appointed in preference to a competent person not in your employment. Our guide on how to choose a health and safety consultancy covers that test and the contract questions that go with it.

Whoever you appoint, HSE's overview is plain that managing health and safety stays your legal duty as the employer, even when the advice comes from outside.

The qualifications you will see, and what each one shows

Health and safety consultant qualifications come in two kinds, and they answer different questions. A qualification is an assessment the person passed. A professional grade, such as TechIOSH or CMIOSH, is awarded by a professional body for qualifications plus experience, and IOSH asks holders of those grades to keep up continuing professional development (CPD).

Credential	Level	Who the awarding body aims it at	What it tells you about a consultant
IOSH Managing Safely	Three-day awareness course	Line managers and supervisors, with no prior safety experience needed	Useful training for your own managers. Thin evidence on its own for someone advising you
NEBOSH National General Certificate	SCQF level 6, comparable to RQF level 3	Managers, supervisors and people starting a health and safety career	A sound grounding in the law and in risk assessment, from a minimum of 66 taught hours. NEBOSH describes it as a stepping stone for people starting a health and safety career
NEBOSH Level 6 National Diploma for Occupational Health and Safety Management Professionals	RQF level 6, accredited by Ofqual	People making health and safety their career	Professional-level study: a minimum of 191 taught hours and three assessed units. Holders may use the letters DipNEBOSH
A health and safety degree, or a related degree with a health and safety conversion qualification	Degree level	Varies by course	IOSH counts these as degree-level, alongside the NEBOSH Diploma and the IOSH Level 6 Diploma

The descriptions and figures come from the awarding bodies' own pages: IOSH for Managing Safely, and NEBOSH for the General Certificate and the Diploma.

IOSH membership grades

The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) publishes its membership levels and what each one requires.

Grade	What IOSH asks for
Affiliate	Open to anyone working in, or considering a career in, safety, health and wellbeing. No qualifications or experience needed
Technical (TechIOSH)	A level 3 to level 5 qualification, such as the NEBOSH National General Certificate, and at least one year of practical experience
Certified (CertIOSH)	A level 6 qualification, such as the NEBOSH National Diploma or an equivalent degree, and at least two years of professional experience
Chartered Member (CMIOSH)	At least three years in senior roles and an assessment of professional competence, through IOSH's Professional Development Assessment or its experiential route
Chartered Fellow (CFIOSH)	At least five years as a Chartered Member and five years in senior health and safety leadership

IOSH also runs an experiential route to CertIOSH or CMIOSH for people with five years of leadership experience and no degree-level health and safety qualification.

Read the grade, because "Member of IOSH" on a proposal could mean Affiliate, which needs no qualifications or experience. Ask which grade and check it. If a CV shows a grade that is missing from IOSH's current levels page, ask what the person holds now.

IOSH is one of several professional bodies. A consultant from an environmental health background may hold a senior grade with the environmental health body CIEH or, in Scotland, REHIS. An occupational hygienist may have a grade with the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS), and an ergonomist one with CIEHF. The OSHCR register below names the senior grades it accepts from each of these bodies.

What the OSHCR register checks for you

The Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSHCR) lists individual consultants. It was set up in 2012 by a network of professional bodies and is governed by IOSH. HSE's find a consultant page supports it as a trustworthy means of finding consultants who hold a status recognised by their professional body, have valid insurance and are up to date.

OSHCR's eligibility rules require at least one of Chartered Member status with IOSH, CIEH or REHIS with health and safety qualifications; Fellow status with IIRSM with degree-level qualifications; Chartered Member or Chartered Fellow of the BOHS Faculty of Occupational Hygiene; or Registered Member or Fellow status with CIEHF. Applicants must also declare that they keep up their CPD, follow their professional body's code of conduct, give sensible and proportionate advice, and hold professional indemnity insurance or equivalent.

Three things to know when you use it:

1. A live profile tells you OSHCR holds in-date insurance details, the annual renewal is up to date and the professional body has not withdrawn eligibility. OSHCR hides a profile when the professional indemnity details expire, when the annual renewal is overdue, or when the consultant's professional body tells OSHCR they are no longer eligible.
2. It lists people. A firm can employ registered and unregistered consultants, so ask which named person is on the register and whether that person will be the one advising you.
3. It is voluntary. Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 names no register, so a competent consultant may have chosen to stay off it. Treat a live profile as good evidence of grade and insurance, plus a declaration on CPD, then check the rest.

You can filter the register by location, industry, topic and professional body.

What a qualification does not prove

A certificate records that someone passed an assessment, possibly years ago. Five things sit outside it, and HSE's guidance or OSHCR's rules point at each.

Sector experience

HSE says a consultant's advice should be specific to the risks in your workplace and based on their knowledge and experience of your industry and processes. Two people with the same Diploma, one from offices and retail and one from warehouses and builders merchants, bring different competence to a yard. Ask for examples of operations like yours and a client you can speak to.

Insurance

HSE's guidance asks you to make sure a consultant is adequately insured, and OSHCR requires professional indemnity insurance or equivalent "to cover the nature of their duties". Ask for the certificate, read the dates, and check that the activities it covers match the advice you are buying.

Currency

A qualification records what someone knew on the day they passed. IOSH asks members at Technical grade and above to keep a CPD record, and OSHCR asks registered consultants to declare adequate CPD, so ask for a recent CPD record and confirm the grade is current.

Specialist work

HSE notes that some health and safety law describes the training, skills and experience a person needs to be competent for a specific task. A generalist can be exactly right for your risk assessments and still need to hand an asbestos survey or occupational hygiene monitoring to a specialist. Ask what they do themselves and what they pass on.

Judgement

OSHCR's code of conduct asks registered consultants to distinguish legal requirements from good practice, "the 'must do' and the 'could do'". HSE asks for advice that concentrates on significant risks, recommends reasonably practicable controls and avoids paperwork for its own sake. The way to see that is a sample of what they have written.

Evidence to ask for, and how to check it

Ask for all of this in writing before you sign anything.

Question	What to ask for	How to check it
Who will advise us?	Names and CVs for the consultants on your account	Everything else is checked against these names
What are their qualifications?	Copies of certificates: NEBOSH Diploma, degree, specialist certificates	NEBOSH runs an online verification service, and the holder approves your request by email
Which professional body, and which grade?	The body, the grade and the membership number	IOSH offers an online membership status check. For other bodies, ask the body
Are they on OSHCR?	A link to the named person's profile	Search OSHCR and confirm the profile is live
Are they insured for this work?	The professional indemnity certificate	Read the dates and the insured activities
Have they worked in operations like ours?	Two or three examples and a reference	Call the reference and ask what changed after the advice
Can we see their work?	An anonymised risk assessment or audit report they wrote	Check it is specific to a real site and separates legal requirements from good practice

For the last row, look for specifics. A risk assessment written for a real site names the activities, the people at risk, the controls in place and who owns each action. A generic one could have been written for anyone.

Where Opus fits

We wrote this guide, so the same questions apply to us. Our consultants include former HSE and local authority regulators. Opus is also a NEBOSH Learning Partner at Silver tier and an approved IOSH training provider. Those two describe Opus as a training provider, and the courses we run include the NEBOSH National General Certificate and IOSH Managing Safely. A consultant's own qualifications are a separate question, and the table above is how to ask it.

If you want a named consultant to act as your competent person under regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, that is our outsourced health and safety service. For what the competent person role covers, see what qualifications an outsourced competent person should have.

Frequently asked questions

What qualifications do you need to be a health and safety consultant? None are set by law. Regulation 7(5) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 asks for sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities. IOSH's grades map the professional route: a level 3 qualification such as the NEBOSH National General Certificate, then a level 6 qualification such as the NEBOSH National Diploma or a degree, then CMIOSH after senior experience.

Is a NEBOSH General Certificate enough to be a health and safety consultant? It is the starting point. NEBOSH aims the National General Certificate at managers, supervisors and people starting a health and safety career, at a level comparable to RQF level 3. IOSH accepts it for Technical membership and asks for a level 6 qualification, such as the NEBOSH National Diploma, at Certified grade.

What is the difference between TechIOSH, CertIOSH and CMIOSH? They are IOSH grades in ascending order. TechIOSH needs a level 3 to 5 qualification and a year of experience, CertIOSH needs a level 6 qualification and two years of experience, and CMIOSH needs at least three years in senior roles plus an assessment of professional competence.

Does a health and safety consultant have to be on OSHCR? No. Registration is voluntary, and regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 names no register. HSE supports OSHCR as a trustworthy way to find consultants, so a live profile is good evidence of grade and insurance, plus a declaration on CPD.

How do I check a consultant's NEBOSH certificate? Use NEBOSH's online verification service, or the QR code on certificates issued from October 2019. The certificate holder then gets an email asking them to approve the request, and it expires if they leave it for two days.

Should a health and safety consultant have professional indemnity insurance? Yes. HSE's guidance says to make sure any consultant you use is adequately insured, and OSHCR requires professional indemnity insurance or equivalent. Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 deals with competence and with adequate time and means, so insurance is a check you make as the buyer.

Does hiring a qualified consultant transfer my legal duties? No. HSE's guidance is that managing health and safety remains your legal duty as the employer, even when you use someone from outside your business.