Do you know where you stand when it comes to Self-employment and the Health & Safety Executive?
Being self-employed can be confusing at the best of times, working out your costs, your hours, finding your niche market and then there’s the discipline to commit to it 100% to lift your business off the ground and become successful. From personal experience I know its tough but also has its rewards and done right, can be the best thing you’ll ever do. So I commend anyone prepared to take the leap of faith (“with good planning mind”) and start their own business.
Now depending on your chosen area of expertise the Health & Safety Executive has guidelines that you must comply with to also be able to run a Health & Safety conscious business. So what is meant by self employed? For health and safety law purposes, ‘self-employed’ means that you do not work under a contract of employment and work only for yourself.
This is the likelihood of someone else being harmed or injured (e.g. members of the public, clients, contractors etc) as a consequence of your work activity.
Now what comes in to question is does your business potentially affect the health and safety of your customers or employees you may have working for you. Most self-employed people will know if their work poses a risk to the health and safety of others. You must consider the work you are doing and judge for yourself if it creates a risk or not.
if your work activity is specifically mentioned in the regulations above
or if your work activity poses a risk to the health and safety of others, then the law applies to you
For example if you operate a swimming pool for the public to use then your work could affect the health and safety of other people and you must take appropriate steps to protect them as the law will apply to you.
We have worked with Safewell for many years and are retained clients, so we have developed an excellent working relationship with the team. However, this really came into its own when Covid 19 appeared.
As a Plumbing and Heating business, we were able to carry on working during the lockdown but only for responding to emergencies. We were obviously very concerned about the health and safety of our employees and before we even had chance to get in touch with Safewell, they had emailed us offering their assistance. It is hard to put down on paper how that made us feel - we like everyone else felt totally at sea, which way to turn, what to do? But Safewell were there guiding, supporting and being totally brilliant. Their attention to detail is very impressive and reassuring and we feel able to ask lots of questions without feeling silly.
During the pandemic Safewell helped us to write risk assessments, safety procedures and protocols. They kept in touch regularly, issuing new guidance as soon as it appeared and checking in with us. They held group Q&A sessions over Zoom which were helpful, and knowing other businesses were facing the same challenges and having the opportunity to discuss issues was invaluable. Their help during the preparation for a full return to work was brilliant, they enabled us to be fully prepared and feel in control, and when we had our first case of Covid within the team, because we had planned our response it felt ok.
I think our team felt very reassured by our robust approach and that our office was Covid secure. We are extremely grateful to all the team at Safewell
