Safety in film, TV and broadcasting

This information will help those involved in film, TV and broadcasting comply with their legal duties to eliminate or reduce risks from their work.

What you should know

Health and safety legislation applies to all work activities in the UK, whether conducted by UK nationals or foreigners, even if they are not being paid.

Legal duties under health and safety law cannot be delegated.

What you must do

You must:

define responsibilities and duties
have a system for managing health and safety
assess and manage risks
regularly review the process and procedures for managing risk

Defining responsibilities and duties

Employers are required to have a management system in place to control the risk to employees and others from their work.

The industry uses large numbers of independent companies and freelancers and it is sometimes difficult to decide who the employer is. However, in the majority of cases, the employer will be the producer or production company. Help in deciding individual responsibilities can be found in: Health and safety in audio-visual production: Your legal duties.

Systems for managing health and safety

Management systems for health and safety will depend on the size and complexity of your production.

General advice on management systems can be found in the HSE guidance on managing health and safety.

For more complex, hazardous or specialist productions you can find guidance on using a health and safety consultant or adviser.

Please note, an employer's legal duty to manage health and safety cannot be delegated to a consultant or to anyone else.

Assess and manage risks

Risk assessment is a fundamental part of managing health and safety and helps you identify hazards and control the risk they create for those involved in your production. The process requires you to:

take the time to systematically look at your activities
decide what hazards they present
assess the risk of people being exposed to these hazards
find ways to either eliminate or control them

You can find more information on managing risks and risk assessment at work.

Review

As work progresses, you must review and update both the risk assessments you have made and the controls you put in place to make sure they are still working.

After the production, it is good practice to review the whole system to see whether useful lessons could be learned for the future.

Complying with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations

The National Archives have examples of complying with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations in film and broadcasting.

Find out more

The following publications may help you control risks in TV and film production: