Free risk assessment template for trades

Do you need a risk assessment, and must it be written?

If you employ anyone, yes, you must assess the risks. Writing it down is a legal requirement only once you have five or more employees. Below that, the duty to think it through and control the risks is the same; you just do not have to keep a record. Most trades write one anyway, because main contractors, letting agents and commercial customers ask for it before you start.

The duty comes from regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. An employer must make a "suitable and sufficient" assessment of the risks to employees and to anyone else affected by the work: the customer, their family, the neighbours, people walking past. Where you employ five or more, regulation 3(6) says you must record the significant findings and any group of employees identified as especially at risk.

Self-employed with nobody working for you? HSE's guidance for the self-employed says the law still applies if your work could put other people at risk, or if you work in construction, with gas or with asbestos. That covers most trades working in someone's home.

This page covers Great Britain. Northern Ireland has its own version, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000, enforced by HSENI. This is general guidance, not legal advice.

The five steps, and where each one goes

HSE breaks risk management into five steps: identify the hazards, assess the risks, control the risks, record your findings, and review the controls (HSE: steps needed to manage risk). The generator follows HSE's own template, so each step has a home on the page.

• Identify the hazards. Walk the job in your head, or better, on site: how you get up there, what you cut, what you lift, what is already in the building. Each hazard is a row.
• Assess the risks. For each row, write who might be harmed and how. "Customer's children, tripping on cables across the landing" beats "public".
• Control the risks. Write what you already do in the "already doing" column. Ask first whether you can get rid of the hazard altogether, then how to make harm unlikely. PPE comes last, not first.
• Record your findings. The printed page is your record, and it is what you show a main contractor or an inspector.
• Review the controls. Set a review date in the header. Look again if the job changes, if something goes wrong, or if there is a near miss.

The trade hazards built into the template

Each preset fills a row with the hazard, who is usually at risk and the controls HSE's guidance points to. They are a starting point. Delete what does not apply and add what is specific to the house, the customer and the day. HSE is blunt about this: copying an example and putting your company name on it "would not satisfy the law".

A filled-in example: rewiring a 1970s semi

Two electricians, a part rewire of a three-bed semi built in 1974. The family stays in while the work is done. The template opens with this job and these five hazards, each started from its preset. The header gives the company, job address, date, who assessed it (the firm's owner) and a review date at the start of second fix. Below is how each row reads once finished, with the further action and the person and date for it.

Note what is missing. No "risk score" and no five-by-five grid: HSE's template has no score column, and you do not need one for a job like this. What matters is whether each control is real and whether someone is going to do it.

• Asbestos. Who: both electricians, the family. Already doing: asked the owner about the survey; none exists. Further action: no drilling or chasing into ceilings or the 1974 textured finishes until a sample is tested; stop work if anything suspect is found. By: owner, before day 1.
• Dust from chasing brick walls. Who: both electricians, the family. Already doing: wall chaser with on-tool extraction on an M class vacuum. Further action: face-fit tested masks, dust sheets and a closed door, clean up with the vacuum, never a brush. By: lead electrician, day 1.
• Electricity. Who: both electricians. Already doing: supply isolated at the consumer unit, locked off, tested dead. Further action: the key stays with the person working; a notice on the board. By: lead electrician, every day.
• Ladders and the loft hatch. Who: whoever is in the loft. Already doing: a stepladder checked each morning. Further action: boards across the joists to work from, a light in the loft. By: improver, day 2.
• Trips on cables and tools. Who: the family, especially the two children. Already doing: tidy up at the end of the day. Further action: cables run high, tools off the landing, the family told which rooms are off limits. By: both, every day.

Where risk assessments usually go wrong

Most bad risk assessments are not wrong, they are useless. They list hazards nobody could argue with, and controls nobody will do. Five things to avoid.

• The same sheet for every job. A generic one for your trade is a fine start. The house, the customer and the access are what make it suitable and sufficient.
• "Take care" as a control. Name the thing: "tower scaffold", "M class vacuum", "supply locked off". If you could not check it was done, it is not a control.
• PPE first. Gloves and masks are the last line. HSE's order is to get rid of the hazard, then change the job, the materials or the method, then protect the person.
• Forgetting everyone else. The customer, children, pets, neighbours, the postman on the path under your ladder. The law covers them too.
• Filing it and forgetting it. HSE says not to rely purely on paperwork: the priority is controlling the risks in practice. The people on the job need to know the controls and use them. Brief them, and get the page out when things change.

Common questions