How to support an in-house health and safety manager

You support an in-house health and safety manager by adding what one person cannot carry alone: specialist assessments outside their discipline, competent cover when they are away, extra capacity for audits and busy periods, and a second experienced person in the room when an inspector calls. The manager keeps running the programme, and the employer keeps the legal duty.

In Great Britain, regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR 1999) requires you to appoint "one or more competent persons", and regulation 7(8) of MHSWR 1999 puts a competent employee first. So an outside consultancy is an addition to your manager, appointed for the work where the manager's competence or time runs out.

Two people decide whether that support arrives: the manager, who knows where the gaps are, and the director they report to, who approves the spend.

Where does an in-house health and safety manager need support?

Four gaps come with the job itself, whoever holds it.

One person carries one person's training and experience. A capable warehouse safety manager may know racking, vehicle movement and manual handling thoroughly and still need a specialist for a DSEAR assessment on the battery charging bay, a noise survey on the cutting line, or a legionella risk assessment on the water system.

Regulation 7(3) of MHSWR 1999 turns time into a legal question. It requires the number of competent persons, the time available to them and the means at their disposal to be adequate, having regard to the size of the business, the risks and how those risks are spread across it. One manager covering four sites through an acquisition can be adequate in March and stretched by June.

Annual leave, sickness, parental leave and a vacancy after a resignation can each mean weeks or months without the business's competent person. Cover is easier to arrange before the absence starts.

Audit needs a degree of independence. A manager auditing their own system is marking their own work, and a board that wants to know whether the arrangements hold up gets a clearer answer from somebody who did not write them.

Area	Your manager keeps	A consultancy can add
Day-to-day presence	Walking the floor, near misses, contractors, supervisors	Stays inside the business. Presence is why you employ someone
Specialist assessments	Spotting that one is due, then acting on the findings	DSEAR, noise, legionella, fire risk and asbestos surveys
Absence	The handover and the site contacts	Competent person cover while the manager is away
Busy periods	Deciding what comes first	Extra capacity for audits, a new site or an acquisition
Audit and board reporting	Running the system day to day	An independent audit the board can read
Inspections	First contact with the inspector	A consultant alongside at visits and meetings, and help drafting a written response
Training	Knowing who needs which course	Course delivery, from awareness sessions to certificated qualifications
Occupational health	Referrals and records	Health surveillance carried out by occupational health technicians

What does the law say when a manager and a consultancy share the work?

Regulation 7 of MHSWR 1999 bears directly on this arrangement in four places.

The duty in regulation 7(1) of MHSWR 1999 is to appoint "one or more competent persons". Bringing in a consultancy for DSEAR adds a competent person for that work and leaves the manager's appointment where it was.

Under regulation 7(8) of MHSWR 1999, where there is a competent person in your employment, that person "shall be appointed ... in preference to a competent person not in his employment". Your manager is the appointment the law expects first.

Once you have appointed more than one person, regulation 7(2) of MHSWR 1999 requires you to make arrangements for "ensuring adequate co-operation between them". Two competent persons working from separate document sets, or reporting to different directors, make that co-operation hard to show.

Regulation 7(4)(a) of MHSWR 1999 requires you to inform an external appointee of the factors you know or suspect affect the health and safety of anyone who may be affected by your business. In a business with a safety manager, that knowledge sits with the manager, so the consultant learns the site through them.

None of this moves the duty. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places on the employer the duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees. The manager and the consultancy both assist you in meeting it.

How do you set up support for an in-house health and safety manager?

Start with a one-page split, agreed in writing before the first visit: which assessments the consultancy carries out, which the manager keeps, who acts as competent person during an absence and from what date, and who speaks to an inspector on the day.

The manager should be the client. The consultant reports findings to the manager first, and the actions go into the manager's own system so there is one list.

A specialist report filed outside the manager's risk assessments starts a second system, and two systems drift apart. Keep one set of documents, held by the manager.

For absence cover, agree how the consultant reaches the records, who the deputy contacts on each site are, and what triggers cover, for example a fortnight's leave or a resignation.

Inspections need the same planning. Decide who meets the inspector, who calls the consultant and who attends any follow-up meeting. With enforcement support, the consultant attends alongside the manager, so the manager stays the person the inspector deals with.

Three signs suggest outside support is competing with your manager: the consultant reports to a director around them, the business holds two versions of the same risk assessment, or findings arrive that the manager has not seen. Each one is a reason to go back to the one-page split.

How does a director decide how much support the manager needs?

Ask the manager four questions, and listen for the hesitations.

1. Which assessments fall due in the next year that you would want a specialist to sign off?
2. Who is our competent person on the days you are on leave?
3. When was our system last audited by somebody who did not write it?
4. If an inspector arrived tomorrow, who would you want in the room with you?

HSE's guidance for directors and board members, INDG417, says "The board should review health and safety performance at least once a year". It also asks the board to make sure "periodic audits of the effectiveness of management structures and risk controls for health and safety are carried out". A gap analysis or audit delivered to the manager and read by the board gives it an independent view without going around the manager.

If you run one low-risk site and your manager has the competence and the time, the right amount of outside support may be a specialist assessment bought when one falls due, and nothing on retainer. A retained arrangement starts to make sense when the gaps recur: several sites, specialist risks that need repeat assessment, or absences the business cannot cover from inside. At that point the choice is whether to employ or retain, and any quote is worth reading line by line against what a retained service includes.

With clients who already employ a safety manager, we work alongside their team on specialist assessments, regulatory liaison, extra capacity when the risk is higher, and competent person cover during absences. The outsourced health and safety page sets out how that arrangement runs, and the Opus Safety Partnership is the ongoing version of it. Our fire, asbestos, noise and legionella assessments are usually separate one-off assessments, and they can be built into a Partnership by agreement. Opus was founded by former HSE and local authority regulators, and that experience shapes how we prepare a team for an inspection.

Frequently asked questions

Will bringing in a health and safety consultancy undermine our in-house manager? It extends their reach when the manager sets the scope and receives the findings. Regulation 7(8) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 puts a competent employee first, so the consultancy works as an addition to your manager.

Can a consultant act as our competent person while our health and safety manager is on leave? Yes. Regulation 7(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 provides for "one or more competent persons", so a consultant can be appointed to cover a period of absence. Agree the start date and access to records before the leave begins.

Do we need outside support if we already employ a competent health and safety manager? Only where their competence or their time runs out. For a single low-risk site that may mean an occasional specialist assessment, and for a multi-site business with specialist risks it may mean a retained arrangement.

Who is legally responsible when a consultancy and an in-house manager share the work? The employer keeps the duty. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places it on the employer, and the competent persons you appoint under regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 assist you in meeting it.

Should the consultant report to the health and safety manager or to the board? Day-to-day findings go to the manager, who owns the action list. HSE's guidance for directors (INDG417), in its passage on auditing in larger organisations, says the board should have unrestricted access to both external and internal auditors. Agree in advance how an independent audit reaches the board, with the manager in the room.

Which specialist assessments can a consultancy take off an in-house manager? Any where the competence sits outside the manager's experience. DSEAR, noise, legionella, fire risk and asbestos surveys each call for their own competence, and some need equipment, such as a sound level meter where noise levels have to be measured.

How much outside support does an in-house health and safety manager need? There is no formula in law. Regulation 7(3) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 measures adequacy against the size of the business, the risks and how they are spread, so the answer changes when you add a site or bring in a hazardous substance.