F.A.Q

As an employer, you must appoint someone competent to help you meet your health and safety
duties. A competent person is someone with the necessary skills, knowledge, attitude, training,
and experience to manage health and safety. (Reg 7 of MHSWR)
At Browns Safety Services we breakdown your compliance into a clear and concise action plan
which allows direction for your organisation to understand what needs to be achieved. We
endeavour to support your business focussing on 3 key aspects of compliance
1) Keeping your people safe and ensuring their wellbeing whilst at work, predominately
through assurance, engagement, and surveillance activity.
2) Managing risk proportionately ensuring that the correct and most cost-effective controls are
in place to manage health and safety risks associated to your organisation’s undertakings.
3) Reducing exposure to criminal and civil prosecution by ensuring your compliance.

If there are 5 regular occupants or more the fire risk assessment must be in writing. If your block
of flats or business premises normally has over 4 occupants at once, then you are legally
required for your fire risk assessment to be documented. (Part 2 Article 9 RRFSO 2005)
At Browns Safety Services we carry out Fire Risk Assessments in accordance with the PAS79
standard, which supports your insurance and legal requirements. We have key business partners
that allow us to bring you up to standard in a streamlined manner, be that training for personnel
or supply of equipment we can cater for all of your needs to ensure that your premises are safe.

Legislation associated to Health and Safety can be deemed synonymous with the term
“Reasonably Practicable” which means that an organisation can apply a risk-based approach to
legislation qualified under the term “Reasonably Practicable”. This is the sum of Risk level vs
Time, Cost and Effort to apply control.
A large misconception from employers is that all legal requirements associated to Health and
Safety can be risk assessed, this results in a huge unknown retained risk of criminal prosecution.
In Health and Safety legislation there are three levels of statutory obligation that employers
must adhere too: -
1) Absolute Requirements – This is the highest level of statute qualified in the legislation by
MUST or SHALL. There is no negotiation this must be carried out by the employer.
2) Practicable – This is the second level of statute and will be qualified by the term practicable
within the legislation. This means that if the requirements are technically possible to achieve
then they must be conformed to by the employer.


3) Reasonably Practicable – This is the lowest level of statute again within the legislation the
term Reasonably Practicable will be within the text of the legislation. This means that the
requirement can be risk assessed to attain whether the control necessary is proportionate to
the risk the employer is exposed too. (e.g. Risk level vs Time, Cost and Effort)

As defined by the HSE, a risk assessment is “a careful examination of what, in your work,
could cause harm to people”. It’s a legal requirement for all employers and self-employed
workers. (Reg 3 of MHSWR)
Before you carry out a workplace risk assessment, you first need to be familiar with two
important terms: hazard and risk.
A hazard is anything that has the potential to cause harm. This can be anything from an
exposed wire to cleaning products.
A risk is the chance, no matter the severity, of somebody being harmed by a hazard. In your
risk assessment, you should assess the extremity of this harm.
With Browns Safety Services our Consultants can use their expertise to work with your
workforce to develop the necessary safe systems of work including risk assessments to
ensure that: -
1) Your work force has a systematic way to work in a safe and proficient manner
2) As an employer you reduce your likelihood of one of your employees being hurt
3) Safeguard your business against criminal prosecution and civil liability

In any circumstance an employer is tied to “provide whatever information, instruction, training
and supervision is necessary to ensure, so far is as reasonably practicable, the health and safety
at work employees.”(HASWA 2.2 c)
Employee training is vitally important to the success of a competitive workforce. No matter the
industry, filling the gaps in your employees' professional knowledge is essential to keeping them
productive and fulfilled. A high-quality training program can do exactly that.
Browns Safety Services can cover all your needs in relation to increasing awareness on all
matters Health, Safety and Environment. In addition, we have developed a successful Supervisor
Development Program that allows for performing individuals within your organisation to
progress through the ranks successfully. We take a performing individual within your
organisation and give them the skillset to become a leader of your teams and help transform the
organisations culture into a positive solution focussed team by giving your leaders the right tools
to succeed.