Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to assess and manage the risks of its work. This guide covers what they require and how they apply to lifting and machine moving.

Overview

What the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 cover

Workplace risk assessment comes from the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. They turn the general duties of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 into specific duties on employers.

In short

Every employer must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to its own employees at work, and of the risks its work creates for anyone else.
Every employer must appoint competent people to help it meet its duties.
Employers sharing a workplace must co-operate with each other and co-ordinate their safety measures.
For lifting, this is where the duty to assess the risks of a lifting operation sits. LOLER has no risk assessment regulation of its own.

Full title	Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
Reference	SI 1999/3242
Current version	The Regulations as amended. legislation.gov.uk lists no outstanding changes to the revised text.
Publisher	The National Archives, on legislation.gov.uk
Status	In force
Legal status	Regulations made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Breaking them is a criminal offence.
Extent	Great Britain
Northern Ireland	Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000

Duty holders

Who has duties under the Regulations

Most of the duties fall on employers. Some also reach the self-employed and people working on someone else’s premises.

Employers carry the risk assessment and the duty to appoint competent help.
Employers sharing a workplace, and self-employed people on it, must work together (regulation 11).
Host employers must give visiting workers’ employers clear information on the risks and the measures in place, and give the visiting workers suitable instructions and information themselves (regulation 12).
Employees have their own duties under regulation 14.

A large green tank hanging in two round slings beside a grey factory building — A tank being offloaded from transport outside a factory, slung in two round slings.

Duties

What the Regulations require

Risk assessment

Under regulation 3, every employer must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of its own employees at work, and of the risks its work creates for anyone else, such as the public or other contractors’ workers. An employer with five or more employees must record the significant findings and any group of employees the assessment identifies as especially at risk.

Principles of prevention

Under regulation 4, any preventive and protective measures an employer puts in place must follow the general principles of prevention in Schedule 1. They start with avoiding risks and evaluating the ones that cannot be avoided, then work through tackling risks at source, adapting to technical progress, swapping a dangerous method for a safer one, and putting measures that protect everyone ahead of measures that protect one person.

Safety arrangements

An employer makes and follows arrangements, suited to the size and nature of the business, for planning, organising, controlling, monitoring and reviewing safety measures (regulation 5). With five or more employees, they must be written down.

Competent help

Regulation 7 requires every employer to appoint one or more competent persons to help it meet its health and safety duties. If someone in its own employment is competent, the employer should appoint them in preference to an outside adviser.

Serious and imminent danger

Each employer sets up procedures for serious and imminent danger and nominates enough competent people to run any evacuation (regulation 8). Workers facing serious, imminent and unavoidable danger can stop work and go straight to a place of safety. Except in exceptional cases set out in the procedures, they cannot resume work while the danger remains. Restricted areas are open only to employees with adequate instruction.

Capabilities and training

Employers take account of employees’ capabilities when giving them tasks, and train them on recruitment and when new or increased risks arise from a change of job, new or changed equipment or work systems, or new technology (regulation 13). Training is repeated where appropriate and given in working hours.

Employers keep workers under 18 off certain work, including work beyond their capacity or with accident risks their inexperience may stop them recognising or avoiding (regulation 19). Over school-leaving age, such work is allowed if needed for training, competently supervised and with risk as low as reasonably practicable.

Information and shared sites

Employers must tell employees, in terms they understand, about the risks the assessment has found (regulation 10). Fixed-term and agency workers must be told of any special skills the work needs and any health surveillance, fixed-term workers before they start; the agency is told the skills and job risks (regulation 15).

When two or more employers share a workplace, each must co-operate with the others and take reasonable steps to co-ordinate safety measures with them, including telling them about the risks from its own work (regulation 11).

Lifting

How the Regulations apply to lifting and machine moving

HSE’s Approved Code of Practice and guidance on LOLER, L113, explains that LOLER has no specific risk assessment regulation because these Regulations already require the risks of a lifting operation to be assessed. HSE also says a generic lift plan for routine lifts could be part of the normal risk assessment for the activity.

When a crane crew shares a construction site or a client’s premises with another employer, regulation 11 applies to each of them.
When a lifting crew works inside a client’s building, the client as host employer must tell the crew’s employer about the risks there and the measures in place.
For a complex lift, L113 suggests help from external advisers competent in lift planning, appointed under regulation 7.
L113 says the contract should settle who is responsible, though a contract cannot pass on a legal duty.
Lifting equipment or methods that bring new or increased risks trigger training under regulation 13.

Machine moves get the same regulation 3 risk assessment. Manual handling and COSHH each need their own assessment where they apply.

A long pipe section hanging from a red top spreader beam and two lower spreader beams against a grey sky — A 24t pipe bridge suspended from a 16m top spreader beam and two bottom spreader beams.

Definitions

Key definitions

Competent person: under regulation 7, someone with sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to give proper help.
Significant findings: the parts of a risk assessment that an employer with five or more employees must record (regulation 3).
Host employer: an employer or self-employed person in whose business another firm’s people are working (regulation 12).
Principles of prevention: the order of measures in Schedule 1, from avoiding a risk altogether through to giving employees appropriate instructions.

Enforcement

Enforcement and penalties

The Regulations are made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and enforced in the same way, by HSE and local authorities. It is an offence under section 33 of the Act to contravene them, with the penalties the Act sets, and an inspector can serve improvement or prohibition notices. An employer cannot plead an act or default by its employee, or by its regulation 7 competent person, as a defence in criminal proceedings (regulation 21). In Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service decides whether to prosecute. Our guide to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 covers enforcement in more detail.

In Northern Ireland the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000 apply instead. HSENI enforces them, sharing that responsibility with the 11 local councils. HSENI’s risk assessment page covers the Northern Ireland duties.

Guidance

Codes of practice, guidance and sources

These Regulations no longer have an Approved Code of Practice. The old one, L21, is not on HSE’s list of current codes. HSE’s general guidance on running health and safety in an organisation is Managing for health and safety (HSG65), and its page on the steps needed to manage risk walks through a risk assessment.

Sources and further reading

Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 on legislation.gov.uk
L113, Safe use of lifting equipment, on the link between these Regulations and LOLER
HSE: steps needed to manage risk
Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000 on legislation.gov.uk

Questions

Common questions

When does a risk assessment have to be written down?

When the employer has five or more employees. The record must cover the significant findings and any group of employees identified as especially at risk.

Who counts as a competent person under these Regulations?

Someone with enough training and experience or knowledge, and other qualities, to help the employer meet its health and safety duties.

When must a risk assessment be reviewed?

When there is reason to think it is no longer valid, or when the work it covers has changed significantly. The employer then makes whatever changes the review shows are needed.