‘Competent H&S Advice…’
‘The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999’ state you must have access to H&S Advice from a competent person to enable you to meet the requirements of health and safety law.
The HSE defines a competent person as ‘someone who has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities that allow them to assist you properly’.
The competent person can either be someone employed (in-house) or someone you outsource these services to externally. This could either be a person or company.
A good indication whether a H&S Practitioner is competent to provide you with H&S advice is if they are Chartered Members of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).
IOSH is the Chartered body for H&S Professionals. To become a Chartered Member of IOSH (CMIOSH), you must have the necessary qualifications, experience and pass an IOSH peer interview amongst other things.
Another useful way of finding a competent person to provide you with H&S Advice is looking on the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSHCR).
‘A Benchmark Standard for Safety Consultants…’
A network of professional bodies and stakeholders worked together in partnership to develop this register.
This has established a benchmark standard for safety consultants and helped to raise the quality of advice being given to businesses.
Further details can be found on the HSE link below.
http://www.hse.gov.uk/involvement/competentperson.htm
This post was written by Dean Oliver CMIOSH
Managing Director of Oliver Health and Safety Ltd
Providing Services for Health and Safety in Liverpool, North West and UK wide.
Phone – 0800 772 3950
Email – [email protected]