Risk Assessment

This is a concept which is common to all of the new sets of Regulations. Confusion can arise because the term sounds more complicated than the process it describes. The underlying concept is, in fact, very simple. We all carry out risk assessments every day. When crossing the road the HAZARD of being knocked down by a car is always there. For this reason you make your own assessment of being run over before deciding to cross. If you think the risk is too great because the traffic is particularly heavy, then you may decide to eliminate it by not crossing, or to reduce it to an acceptable level by waiting until there is a gap, or walking to a pedestrian crossing.
The new health and safety laws work in a similar way. They require an employer to identify all the hazards in the premises eg mincers, slicers, slippery floors etc. Any associated risks must then be assessed, ie are the hazards likely to cause harm to the employees? If the answer for any hazard is yes, then the employer needs to think of ways of eliminating it or reducing the risk to an acceptable level. Failure to do this can have the most tragic consequences.
The main requirement to carry out a risk assessment is contained in the Management Regulations. The Approved Code of Practice, which gives advice on how to comply with the Regulations, clearly states that for small undertakings presenting few or simple hazards, a suitable and sufficient assessment can be a very straightforward process based on judgement and requiring no specialist skills or complicated techniques. In addition to looking at the risks and the people affected by them, it should consider existing precautions and how these can be improved.
In practice it may be easier to look at Risk Assessment as a two stage process, the first stage being an initial judgement which screens out those activities where an assessment is not needed.
Employers with five or more employees need to record the SIGNIFICANT findings of the assessment. For the catering industry this will most probably include those associated with slips, trips and falls, manual handling, contact with hot surfaces or harmful substances, dermatitis, and upper limb disorders.
Where assessments have already been done to meet the requirements of Regulations covering specific aspects of work, for example the Manual Handling Regulations, there is no need to duplicate the work when conducting the overall assessment required by the Management Regulations, but care should be taken to ensure that all significant risks are covered.