The law sets out how you must consult your employees in different situations and the different choices you have to make. There are two sets of general regulations about your duty to consult your workforce about health and safety:
This page explains the relationship between the two sets of regulations and how they affect you and your workforce.
These regulations are designed to enable you and your employees to work together:
You may only have to consult under one set of regulations, or you may have to consult under both, depending on circumstances.
The presence of a union health and safety representative does not prevent managers from communicating directly with the workforce as a whole. Managers remain responsible for managing health and safety in the workplace and should consult the workforce as necessary.
These regulations will apply to most workplaces. However, they do not apply to offshore installations which are covered by:
Where you already have existing consultation arrangements that satisfy health and safety law, you do not have to change them. However, you may want to review your arrangements to make sure that they are the right ones for your organisation now.
If you and your employees disagree about the interpretation of these regulations, you should first use your usual procedure for resolving employment relations disputes. You may find it helpful to involve the Arbitration and Conciliation Service (Acas).
However, health and safety inspectors (from HSE and local authorities) can enforce for failure to comply with legal duties on procedural matters. They will decide what action to take in line with HSE’s Enforcement Policy Statement.
You can find examples, of industry-specific regulations with requirements to consult your workforce, in Consulting workers on health and safety: Approved Code of Practice and guidance.
There is more guidance on handling disagreements with employees.
This section will help you decide which set of regulations applies to you. In some workplaces, for example where some employees are members of recognised trade unions and others are not, you may have to consult according to requirements when both sets of regulations apply.
If you recognise trade unions in any part of the business:
You may have:
Recognised unions and employers should discuss and agree how many representatives to appoint. The number of health and safety representatives will depend on different factors. If there are disagreements that need to be resolved, use your existing employment relations processes or contact Acas.
The nature of your business could mean that you and trade unions will have to be more flexible about the group or groups of employees represented and the number of representatives suitable for your workplace, for example:
Find out more about the functions of union-appointed health and safety representatives.
Normally, trade unions will write to tell you who the appointed health and safety representative is, and make it clear which groups of employees the representative is representing.
An appointed representative should usually have worked for you for the previous 2 years, or had at least 2 years’ experience doing similar work. This is to ensure they will have a level of knowledge that allows them to make a responsible and practical contribution to the health and safety effort.
There may also be times when it is not practical to appoint a representative with 2 years' experience in your organisation or in the job, for instance if:
In such cases, trade unions will appoint the most appropriate representatives, taking their experience and skills into account.
If 2 or more union health and safety representatives ask in writing for a health and safety committee, you must set one up within 3 months. We have information on setting health and safety committees up and making them work.
The law is different if there are employees who are not represented under the Safety Representatives and Safety Committee Regulations 1977, for example if:
Where employees are not represented under the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977, the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996 will apply.
You can choose to consult employees directly as individuals, or through elected health and safety representatives (known as ‘representatives of employee safety’ in the Regulations), or a combination of the two.
If you have a small business, or you have regular contact with all your employees, consulting with individuals is often effective. It gives everyone a chance to have a say in health and safety matters. However, consulting individuals is not practical for all businesses, and consultation through elected representatives may work better.
The size or spread of your workforce may make it unrealistic to consult everyone individually. You may want to arrange for your employees to elect representatives of their choice and there is guidance to help you:
Although by law health and safety representatives appointed by trade unions have more functions than representatives elected by employees, you can choose to give your elected representatives extra roles, as long as they agree to this.
It is quite common to have some parts of a business where workers are members of recognised trade unions and others where they are not. In this case, you may have to consult both:
All your workers are protected by the Employment Rights Act 1996, as amended, against suffering any harm because of any reasonable actions they take on health and safety grounds. This applies regardless of their length of service.
Workers, including health and safety representatives, should not suffer harm. For example, they should not be denied a promotion, or be dismissed unfairly, because they:
You could be taken to an employment tribunal if you penalise workers in this way. There is advice on being taken to an employment tribunal (GOV.UK).
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