Health & Safety Policy (UK, HSWA 1974)
Bespoke UK Health & Safety policy aligned to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and HSE expectations. Statutory written-policy duty for employers of five or more employees.
Single policy
£39.99
One-off purchase · lifetime access · no renewal
Or save with the UK Employment Pack (15 policies for £400)
What is the Health & Safety Policy?
Quick answer. Bespoke UK Health & Safety policy aligned to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Statement of intent, organisation and arrangements. Required in writing for any employer of five or more employees under section 2(3) HSWA.
The Health & Safety Policy is one of 988 bespoke policies available on PolicySuite. Each is generated bespoke to your business from structured questions about your operations — sector, headcount, premises, equipment, substances — not a generic word-doc template you have to rewrite. Buy this single policy at £39.99, or get the complete UK Employment Pack (15 policies for £400) if you need the surrounding policies too.
What’s included
- General statement of health and safety intent signed by the most senior officer
- Statement of organisation — named competent person under Regulation 7 MHSWR 1999
- Risk assessment arrangements (Regulation 3 MHSWR) with review triggers
- Workplace hazard categories scoped to your sector (manual handling, DSE, slips/trips, working at height, electrical, vehicles)
- Accident reporting and RIDDOR 2013 procedure with F2508 routing
- First-aid arrangements aligned to the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981
- Information, instruction and training duties under section 2(2)(c) HSWA
- Employee consultation arrangements (HSCER 1996 / SRSCR 1977)
- Contractor and visitor safety controls
- Annual review and management reporting cycle
Statutory and framework references
The policy is drafted with explicit citations to the following anchors so your HSE inspector, auditor or insurer can verify alignment. Every reference resolves to a primary-source link — legislation.gov.uk for UK statute, hse.gov.uk for HSE guidance, and acas.org.uk for ACAS Codes.
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA), sections 2, 3, 4, 7 and 33
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR)
- Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR)
- Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981
- Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992
- Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996 (HSCER)
- Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992
- Display Screen Equipment Regulations 1992 (DSE)
- HSE guidance INDG259 — “An introduction to health and safety”
Why this policy matters
In 2024 HSE prosecutions secured £64.5m in fines across approximately 200 convictions, and the average fine for a workplace fatality exceeded £350,000. The first document an HSE inspector asks for — and the first piece of evidence in any insurer dispute or coroner referral — is the written health and safety policy. We see many UK SMEs lose ground not because they lacked health and safety entirely, but because the policy they had was generic, undated, or named arrangements that did not match the actual operation. In our experience, a bespoke Health & Safety policy sized to your business is the cheapest single line of defence against a section 33 HSWA charge or a civil claim.
The three failures we see most often are: (1) an unsigned, undated statement with no version history; (2) a copy-paste policy that names equipment or substances the business does not actually use (an inspector will spot this in minutes); and (3) a policy never communicated to the people it binds — section 2(2)(c) HSWA requires information, instruction and training. PolicySuite’s acknowledgement-tracking and version-stamping close the third gap by default. In our experience working with UK SMEs across UK statute and the HSE simple guidance, the policy that fails an inspection is rarely the one that was missing — it is the one that was generic, undated, or never communicated.
How PolicySuite generates this policy for you
Buying the £39.99 single policy unlocks PolicySuite’s structured-question flow for the Health & Safety Policy. You answer ten to twenty questions about your business — sector, headcount, premises type, equipment, hazardous substances, lone working, working at height, transport — and the platform produces a bespoke policy in minutes. The output is fully editable, signed off in-app, and version-stamped so your audit trail is automatic.
Where the policy references statute or HSE guidance, the citations are kept up to date as the regulations change. We track UK statute amendments and HSE guidance updates so the policy you bought today does not silently rot in the back of your shared drive. When something material changes — a new statutory duty, a fresh Approved Code of Practice, an HSE bulletin — you receive an in-app notification and a one-click re-generation prompt that retains all of your business-specific answers.
Single policy versus the full pack
A single £39.99 bespoke policy is the right choice when you already have the surrounding employment policies and just need to add the statutory Health & Safety policy. If you need the complete framework set — disciplinary, grievance, equal opportunities, working time, whistleblowing, sickness absence — the UK Employment Pack (15 policies for £400) bundles the related policies at a lower per-policy cost, with a pack-level audit-mapping table included.
Further reading
The framework page UK Employment explains how Health & Safety fits the wider compliance picture for UK employers. For a primary-source overview, HSE’s simple guidance for small businesses is the canonical starting point.