Health and safety for a small sized business

Business benefits of effective health and safety can span the fact this can make a business run in a more effective overall manner. Good health and safety standards help you to run your business successfully. Meeting the requirements of relevant regulation is a central factor in achieving this. Insurers recognise the wider benefits to society of encouraging businesses in following sensible, proportionate measures aimed at helping them to carry out their activities.

Insurers will continue to settle legitimate claims. Insurers will also co-operate with businesses such as yours if you need to deal with the consequences of vexatious claims made against you. Your insurer will always be willing to offer you guidance on what constitutes good practice in managing health and safety. This guidance should be aimed at improving the resilience of your business in dealing with civil law claims made against you, and will be proportionate to the level of risk involved. This does for sure help a lot of businesses to be able to run their health and safety in a much more effective overall manner.

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is the main law on health and safety and says that every employer is to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of employees and also persons not in their employment who may be affected by work activities. Your insurer expects you to take reasonable steps to comply with this requirement and other related regulations, using the guidance and tools provided by the Health and Safety Executive (or other competent organisations) to help with this aim. Your insurer will not refuse to pay a claim purely because of a breach of health and safety regulations. Your insurer will not withdraw cover mid-term purely because of a breach of health and safety regulations.

There are various forms of employment. Often a working individual may not be engaged under a contract of employment. For this reason, insurers include, under an employers’ liability policy, a definition of who is to be treated as an ‘employee’. Insurers do not generally need you to show any formal evidence that you are keeping to health and safety regulations nor do they ask to see health and safety documents as a condition of granting insurance cover. This is for sure is key the means needed to make sure the cover and the liability can be seen through for either party.