Policy templates / Health & Safety Policy
Charity Health & Safety Policy Template (Free, UK)
Filled in from your workspace when you adopt it in CharityControl. A starting point to adapt, not legal advice.
1. Our commitment
your charity is committed to protecting the health, safety and welfare of everyone affected by our work: our staff, volunteers, beneficiaries, visitors and members of the public. We will provide safe activities, equipment and premises so far as is reasonably practicable, and we treat health and safety as part of running the charity well, not an afterthought.
Signed on behalf of the trustees: from your register. Date: your review date.
2. Who is responsible
The trustees have overall responsibility for health and safety. Day-to-day responsibility sits with from your register, who makes sure risks are assessed, problems are acted on, and this policy is followed.
Everyone, staff and volunteers alike, is responsible for taking reasonable care of themselves and others, following the arrangements below, and reporting anything unsafe to from your register straight away.
3. Managing risk: our risk assessments
We identify what could cause harm in what we do, decide who might be hurt and how, and put sensible measures in place to reduce the risk. The effort matches the risk: a quick look round the hall is enough for a regular meeting, while a public event or a new activity needs a fuller written assessment.
We assess and sign off every event and new activity before the day, and from your register is satisfied it is safe before it goes ahead. The risks in our current work include, for example, use of premises, events, driving, food, physical tasks and working with the public. Written risk assessments are kept by from your register, and everyone is told the controls that apply to them.
4. Induction, training and competence
Every new trustee, staff member or volunteer gets a short safety induction in their first session. It covers the fire exits, who the first aider is, where the accident book is, and the known hazards in what they will be doing. from your register keeps a note that it happened.
No one does a higher-risk task until from your register has checked they know how to do it safely, and shown them if not. Higher-risk tasks include driving for the charity, handling food, working at height (for example on ladders or steps), manual handling and lifting, and using power tools or machinery (for example a strimmer or a mower).
5. Lone working and home visits
Anyone working alone or visiting someone at home tells from your register where they are going and when they expect to finish. from your register raises the alarm if they do not check in to confirm they are safe.
6. Accidents, first aid and emergencies
We provide first aid appropriate to our activities: [a stocked first aid kit at location, and from your register as our first aider / appointed person]. We record every accident, injury or near miss in our accident book / log, including what happened and what we did about it.
In an emergency, call 999. Our emergency arrangements, including how we get people out safely, are set out at / covered in the induction.
7. Reporting serious incidents (RIDDOR)
Some workplace injuries, diseases and dangerous events must be reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) by law under RIDDOR.5 Examples are a death, a specified serious injury, an injury that keeps a worker off their normal duties for more than seven days, or a dangerous occurrence. from your register checks whether an incident is reportable and makes the report to HSE. Most reports are due within 10 days of the incident; a report about an over-seven-day injury is due within 15 days.5
A RIDDOR-reportable event, such as a death or major injury, may also be a Charity Commission serious incident. Where it is, we assess and report it under our Serious Incident Reporting Policy as well as making the RIDDOR report to the HSE, because the two duties are separate.
8. Insurance
If we employ anyone, we hold employers' liability insurance (a legal requirement)7 and display the certificate where staff can see it. We also hold public liability insurance to cover harm to volunteers, beneficiaries and the public. from your register keeps the cover current and checks it matches what we actually do.
9. Fire safety
Where we control our own premises, we carry out a fire risk assessment,8 keep escape routes clear, and make sure everyone knows what to do if there is a fire. Where we use a hired venue, for example a community hall, we check the venue's fire arrangements before we use it and make sure our people know them.
10. Review
The trustees review this policy at least annually, and sooner if our activities change or after any incident. Health and safety is one of our higher-risk areas, so we review it every year rather than on the two-year cycle we use for lower-risk policies. Approved by the board on your review date; next review your review date.
More about this policy
When you need it
Every charity has a legal duty to protect the health and safety of its workers and of anyone affected by what it does. That includes volunteers, beneficiaries, visitors and the public. This comes from the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.[1]
Whether you must write the policy down depends on your size. If you have five or more employees you must have a written health and safety policy by law.[2] With fewer than five employees you do not have to write it down, but you still have to manage the risks, and a short written policy is the simplest way to show you have. A charity run entirely by volunteers has no employees and so no written-policy duty, yet still owes the underlying duty of care to everyone it works with.
This template is a starting point to adapt to your own activities. It is not legal advice.
What it protects against5 examples
A volunteer sets up a fundraising event (bouncy castle, hot food, gazebos in wind) and no one has thought through what could go wrong. Someone trips on a trailing cable or gets scalded at the tea urn.
The policy makes a written risk assessment the normal first step for any activity or event, sized to the risk, and names who signs it off before the day.
An untrained volunteer uses something that can hurt people: the commercial kitchen, a minibus, ladders, a strimmer, or lifts a heavy load alone. There is an injury and it turns out no one checked they were competent or gave any instruction.
The policy says people only do higher-risk tasks after suitable instruction or a check on competence, and lists which tasks need it (driving, food handling, working at height, manual handling).
A staff member or volunteer does a home visit or works alone in the building in the evening. Something happens and no one knows where they are or that they never made it home.
The policy sets a simple lone-working rule: say where you are going, agree a check-in, and name who raises the alarm if you do not confirm you are safe.
An accident or a near miss happens and nobody writes it down. The same hazard injures someone else weeks later, and if it was ever reportable under RIDDOR the charity has missed the legal deadline.
The policy points to an accident and near-miss log everyone can find, says to record on the day, and flags which serious injuries must be reported to the HSE and by when.
A new volunteer or trustee starts and is never told the basics: where the fire exits are, who the first aider is, where the accident book lives, what the known hazards are.
The policy makes a short safety induction part of every person's first session, with a record that it happened.
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How to enforce it
Practical steps to make it live, not just filed:
- Name one trustee as the health and safety lead. They are the person who owns the policy, gets told about accidents, and puts it on the agenda at least once a year. In a small charity this is a named person, not a committee.
- Keep an accident and near-miss log that everyone can reach, and actually look at it. When something is logged, the lead decides if anything needs changing (a cable cover, a new sign, a task moved). Learning from it is what makes the log worth keeping.
- Make a short safety induction part of every new person's first session: fire exits, first aider, accident book, the hazards for their role. Tick it off on their record so you can see who has and has not had it.
- Before any event or new activity, one named person does a risk assessment that fits the risk, and no event runs without it. Keep the assessments together so you can reuse and update them each year rather than starting from scratch.
- Once a year the lead walks the building and the main activities, checks the fire kit and first aid box are in date, and reports to the trustees in a few lines: what was checked, what was fixed, what is still open.
What larger charities add6
Pull one in only when it matches something you actually do:
- Training records and refreshers Mid-size (£1m to £10m)+
- Contractors, premises and equipment Mid-size (£1m to £10m)+
- Specific risk areas Mid-size (£1m to £10m)+
- Health and safety management system and audit Large (£10m+)+
- Board-level assurance Large (£10m+)+
- Specialist and higher-risk duties Large (£10m+)+
What people get wrong
- Copying a large organisation's 30-page health and safety manual. A thick manual full of CDM, occupational-health surveillance and audit schedules you will never run is worse than a short policy you actually follow. Keep only the sections that match what your charity does.
- Assuming 'we're volunteers, or under five staff, so health and safety doesn't apply'. The written-policy duty starts at five employees, but the duty to manage risk applies to everyone, including volunteer-only charities. You may not have to write it down, but you still have to assess and control the risks in what you do.
- Naming no one as responsible. Put a real person against day-to-day responsibility. A policy nobody owns does not get acted on.
- Writing the commitment statement but never doing the risk assessments. The risk assessments are the policy's whole point. They are where the legal duty is actually met. A nice statement with no assessments behind it protects no one.
- Treating a RIDDOR report to the HSE as the end of it. A serious workplace injury or death can be both a RIDDOR report to the HSE and a Charity Commission serious incident. Check both routes; assess and report the Commission side under our Serious Incident Reporting Policy.
Terms used here2
- RIDDOR
- The rules requiring certain workplace injuries and dangerous events to be reported to the Health and Safety Executive.
- serious incident
- An event the Charity Commission expects trustees to report, such as significant harm, fraud or a major loss.
Sources8
Numbered to match the [n] citations in the template.
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSE) legal duty
- Prepare a health and safety policy (HSE): the five-employee written-policy threshold Commission guidance
- Managing risks and risk assessment at work (HSE) Commission guidance
- Volunteering: how to manage the risks (HSE) Commission guidance
- RIDDOR: reporting injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences (HSE) legal duty
- First aid at work (HSE) Commission guidance
- Get insurance for your business (HSE): employers' liability legal duty
- Fire safety in the workplace (gov.uk): Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 legal duty