Business health and safety responsibilities

As a business owner or manager you have a responsibility to your staff, customers, visitors and contractors. There are certain health and safety requirements that you must meet in any workplace.

What you need to do

As a manager or business owner you need to:

• provide a safe and healthy place of work for everyone
• provide and maintain safe equipment and machinery that is fit for purpose
• plan work activities so that they are safe, and provide necessary protective equipment
• provide staff and others with all necessary information, supervision and training
• assess risks to staff and others from the workplace and work activities
• make sure that all necessary safeguards are in place
• ensure that contractors use safe systems of work and give them any information they need to be safe
• record accidents and report them when necessary

Learn more on the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) website.

Construction and building

If you are having construction work done, you may need to notify the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). You may have other duties as well.

Learn more about building safety on the HSE's website.

Specialist treatments - skin piercing businesses

If you perform acupuncture, ear-piercing, tattooing or electrolysis you must register with us. This is to ensure that:

• furniture and equipment are in good repair and can be disinfected
• persons are wearing protective clothing, and have clean towels and cloths
• needles and other instruments are disposable or sterilised
• waste is disposed of safely

Register as a skin piercing business.

Bonfires and fireworks

If your business uses fireworks or burns bonfires, you need to follow rules that keep people are safe.

Cooling towers and evaporative condensers

If you or your business own a wet cooling tower or evaporative condenser, you must register it with us. This is so we can assist inspectors and the HSE in investigating outbreaks of Legionnaire's disease, which can be caused by this equipment.

Learn more about cooling towers and evaporative condensers on the HSE's website.

Register a cooling tower or evaporative condenser

Contact us

You can contact us if you're concerned about a health and safety issue.