A risk assessment template is the document that turns health and safety from an anxious abstraction into a job you can actually finish. Most small employers know they are supposed to have one. Far fewer have a current one they could put their hand on if asked, because the existing version is either a forty-page download full of hazards that have nothing to do with their workplace, or it does not exist at all and everyone hopes nobody asks. Then someone trips on a trailing cable, or an inspector visits, and the gap is suddenly very real.
This pack gives you a risk assessment template that fits a real workplace, plus the recurring safety checks that sit underneath it: fire extinguishers, fire doors, the first aid kit, emergency lighting, and the accident and incident log. None of it is written to frighten you. Health and safety done well is mostly small, sensible habits, recorded so they are provable. The promise here is the same as everywhere else: quiet order, so that the day a question gets asked, the answer is already on paper.
What good looks like
Good health and safety is proportionate. A quiet office and a busy workshop do not need the same controls, and pretending they do is how risk assessments become box-ticking nobody believes. The good version looks at your actual workplace, names the hazards that are really there, decides who could be harmed and how, puts sensible controls in place, and writes it down in language a normal person understands. Then it gets reviewed when something changes, rather than printed once and forgotten.
The failures are familiar. A generic risk assessment copied from the internet that mentions forklifts in an office and says nothing about the trailing leads that are the real hazard. A fire extinguisher last serviced three years ago. A first aid kit raided for plasters and never restocked, so the one time it is needed it is empty. An accident book where minor incidents go unrecorded, so a pattern, the same step everyone trips on, never gets spotted until someone is properly hurt.
An HSE inspector, if they visit, is not looking for perfection or for a fancy management system. They want to see that you have thought about the risks in your specific workplace, taken reasonable steps, and can show it. A sensible, current risk assessment and a few maintained checks are exactly that evidence. The sections below are those checks.
The risk assessment, simply
The legally recognised approach is five steps, and you do not need a consultant to follow them.
- Identify the hazards: walk the workplace and note what could realistically cause harm. Trailing cables, wet floors, manual handling, working at height, machinery, chemicals, lone working, whatever is genuinely present.
- Decide who might be harmed and how: staff, visitors, contractors, members of the public, and anyone more vulnerable.
- Evaluate the risk and decide on controls: for each hazard, what are you already doing, and what more is reasonable. Remove the hazard if you can, control it if you cannot.
- Record your findings: write it down in plain English. If you have five or more employees you must record it.
- Review and update: revisit it regularly and whenever something changes, a new machine, a new process, an accident, a near miss.
Fire extinguisher check
A monthly visual check by you, on top of the annual professional service.
- Extinguisher present and in its designated location, not borrowed as a door prop.
- Pressure gauge in the green where fitted.
- Pin and tamper seal intact, nothing used or discharged.
- No visible damage, corrosion or blocked nozzle.
- Service label in date. The annual service by a competent engineer is logged.
Fire door check
Fire doors only work if they close fully and seal. A propped fire door is a defeated fire door.
- The door is not wedged, propped or held open by anything other than an approved hold-open device.
- It closes fully on its own from any angle and latches into the frame.
- Seals and intumescent strips around the edge are intact, not painted over or missing.
- Hinges are secure and not worn, all screws present.
- The door, frame and any glazing are undamaged, with no gaps you could see daylight through.
First aid kit check
- Kit present, accessible, and its location known by staff.
- Contents complete against the list, with nothing missing.
- Items in date, sterile dressings sealed, nothing perished.
- Restocked promptly after any use, not left half empty.
- The names of trained or appointed first aiders current and displayed.
Emergency lighting check
The lights that guide people out when the power fails are useless if they are dead, and the only way to know is to test them.
- A regular function test: simulate a power failure and confirm the emergency lights come on.
- All emergency fittings and illuminated exit signs working, none dark.
- Exit routes adequately lit along their length, not just at the door.
- A periodic full-duration test to confirm the batteries last the rated time.
- Every test logged with the date and the result.
Accident and incident log
The log is not paperwork for its own sake. It is how you spot the pattern before it becomes an injury.
- Every accident recorded, however minor, with date, who, what happened and what was done.
- Near misses recorded too. A near miss is a free warning.
- Personal details kept securely, in line with data protection.
- The log reviewed for patterns: the same hazard, the same location, the same task coming up repeatedly.
- Anything reportable identified and reported to the HSE within the legal timescale, covered below.
The law, simply
Workplace health and safety in Great Britain sits under the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). One specific duty worth knowing precisely is RIDDOR 2013, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations. In plain English, certain serious events at work must be reported to the HSE, not just written in your own accident book.
A clear, common example: an over-7-day injury, where someone is off work or unable to do their normal job for more than seven consecutive days (not counting the day of the accident) because of a work injury, must be reported to the HSE within 15 days of the accident. Deaths, specified serious injuries and certain dangerous occurrences have their own, faster requirements. The accident log is what tells you when a RIDDOR threshold has been crossed, which is exactly why it belongs in this pack. You can check what is reportable, and report it, on the HSE’s own site: hse.gov.uk.
This is the one area where the rule is precise, so the checklist makes it precise too. Most of health and safety is judgement. RIDDOR is a deadline. Knowing it removes the worry.
Questions operators ask
Do I legally have to write my risk assessment down? If you employ five or more people, yes, you must record the significant findings. Below that you are not strictly required to write it down, but doing so is sensible, it is the only way to prove you assessed the risks, and it costs you nothing but the time to fill in a template.
How often should I review a risk assessment? Regularly as a baseline, and immediately whenever something changes: new equipment, a new process, a change to the premises, or after an accident or near miss. An assessment that describes a workplace you no longer run is not a current assessment.
What is the difference between an accident and a RIDDOR report? Every accident should go in your own log. Only certain serious ones must additionally be reported to the HSE under RIDDOR, such as an over-7-day injury, a specified injury, or a death. The log catches everything, then flags the few that cross the reporting threshold.
Who can carry out fire door and extinguisher checks? The routine visual checks, that a fire door closes and a fire extinguisher is in place and in the green, can be done by a competent member of staff using a simple checklist. The annual extinguisher service and any fire door remedial work should be done by a qualified person. The pack covers the routine checks you do yourself.
Do I need a health and safety policy as well? If you employ five or more people you must have a written health and safety policy. It does not need to be long. It states your commitment, who is responsible for what, and how you manage the day-to-day arrangements. The risk assessment is the practical detail that sits beneath it.
Get the pack
The Health & Safety Pack gives you a plain-English risk assessment template plus the recurring checks that keep a workplace genuinely safe: the fire extinguisher check, the fire door check, the first aid kit check, the emergency lighting check and the accident and incident log. All clean, printable PDFs, sized for a real small business rather than a corporate compliance department.
It is built to replace the dread with a routine. Fill in the template once, run the checks on a sensible cycle, and you move from hoping nobody asks to being able to show, on paper, exactly what you do to keep people safe. Print it, work through it, and let health and safety become quiet order instead of background worry.