Step 5: Assess the risks

The law says you must assess and manage the health and safety risks of your business.

In a risk assessment, you carefully examine what in your work could cause people harm. This will determine if you have taken enough precautions, or if you should do more to prevent harm.

HSE's risk management site gives you practical steps to follow.

• Five steps to risk assessment. We believe this method is the most straightforward for most organisations.
• Risk Assessment and Policy Template. This template brings together your risk assessment, health and safety policy and record of health and safety arrangements into one document to help get you started and save you time. If you already have a policy, you will only need to complete the risk assessment part of the template.
• Example risk assessments. These examples show what a risk assessment might look like, and can be used as a guide when completing the template. They show that a risk assessment should be about identifying practical actions that protect people from harm, not about huge amounts of paperwork.

This is not the only way to do a risk assessment. There are other methods that work well, particularly for more complex risks and circumstances.

Should you decide to complete the health and safety policy part of the template, we have an example health and safety policy for you to use as a guide.

At a later date, there will be an option to complete the form online. Your details would be kept securely online, and you will be able to update at any time. There will also be an option to receive email reminders to update your policy and assessment.