ACCORDING to the Health And Safety Executive more than 30 million working days are lost each year due to work related illhealth and an additional six million working days are lost each year due to workplace injury.

Effective health and safety management is not only a legal requirement but can help reduce working days lost by your business. So keep up-to-date with new developments in health and safety requirements.

Health and safety law applies to all businesses, however small. It covers employees, full or part-time, temporary or permanent. It applies to the self-employed, those doing work experience, apprentices, volunteer workers, mobile workers and home workers. It applies to temporary or casual workers from agencies.

If you are a new business, you will need to register with the Health And Safety Executive or, if you employ workers in an office, shop or certain railway premises, with the local authority.

Assessing health and safety needs is no different from any other task. The first step is to recognise any potential problems.

You should therefore decide what could cause harm to people and find out how to take precautions to minimise the risk.

Risk assessments are a legal requirement. You should assess what could cause harm to people in the workplace, consider whether you have taken sufficient precautions or whether you should do more to prevent potential harm.

Even if you are self-employed, and employ no-one, you still need to assess health and safety risks which may affect you or others working near you or that might be a risk to the public.

If you have five or more employees you need a written Health And Safety Policy Statement. This should set out how you manage health and safety in your organisation.

You must provide free health and safety training for your workers. Employees must be trained and clearly instructed in their duties. If you have contractors working at your premises, you must ensure they are properly trained and competent to work safely. It is important everyone who works for you knows how to work safety and without risk to health.

You are required to appoint one or more competent people to help you comply with your legal health and safety duties. This can be yourself, if you are sure you know enough about what you have to do. It could be one or more of your employees providing that you have given enough time and resources to do this function properly; or it could be a consultant, outside your business.

You must provide for the basic health, safety and welfare needs of all your employees, including those with disabilities. At minimum, you will need to consider lighting, the temperature in the workplace, toilets, washing facilities and drinking water.

If you have any employees, you must have the recognised safety poster or provide them with individual copies of the same information contained on that poster. Employees must be consulted in health and safety matters. Good working involvement will encourage them to take part in making decisions about the management of health and safety in their workplace.

The Reporting Injuries, Diseases And Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR) requires that you must report incidents to the HSE where there is a death, a major injury or an injury where a person is away from work for more than three days. Injuries to members of the public where they are taken to hospital, work related diseases and any dangerous occurrences causing a "near miss" must also be reported.

Finally, if you have any employees, you must have at least £5 million employer's liability compulsory insurance with an authorised insurer. Display the certificate of employer's liability insurance where your employees can easily read it.

Health and safety doesn't have to be expensive, time consuming or complicated. There is no such thing as a risk-free workplace but you can minimise threats to health and safety - and thereby reduce the number of working days lost to your business caused by avoidable incidents.

  • David is with Mitchells Solicitors of York