There is no specific or legal time frame for when you should review your risk assessment. A risk assessment should be reviewed as and when your business goes through and experiences changes.
To make sure that your employees are safe at work and that you are compliant with the law you need to carry out and review risk assessments regularly. This ensures that the risk of harm to staff has not changed.
It is recommended that risk assessments are reviewed on an annual basis, however, it entirely depends on the nature of your work and any changes within the work environment. It is vital to keep health and safety documents up to date. By being proactive to any changes in your work you can prevent and avoid any accidents from occurring.
Here are a few reasons why you should review your risk assessment:
Changes in legislation
Health and safety legislation is constantly changing, so it is important that you are always compliant with the law. This means making sure to respond to any changes or updates and reviewing your risk assessment to reflect this.
Changes in tasks or processes
Workplaces are constantly changing and evolving. There can be changes to equipment, procedures or working conditions which can all have a knock-on effect on the health and safety of the people working in that environment. The HSE states that you should review a risk assessment when there are ‘changes in the workplace that could lead to new risks’ such as ‘staff, a process, the substances, or equipment used’.
Complaints
Sometimes when you are carrying out a risk assessment, a perceived risk or hazard can be overlooked. An employee or even a member of the public may notice this hazard and highlight it to you. If this happens then you need to respond by creating a new risk assessment that addresses the risks that have been brought to your attention.
You should always share risk assessments with staff, not just because it helps to reduce the risk of an accident occurring, but it is also good to share to get feedback on what health and safety issues are not being addressed in your workplace.
Accidents or near misses
Accidents or near misses can still occur even if you have tried to prevent them. If this happens then you can learn from the issues that keep arising. Perhaps you keep getting reports of near misses when staff are doing a particular activity? If this is happening, then it is time you reviewed your risk assessment to help prevent these near misses from occurring.
By carrying out an investigation on accidents or near misses you can identify what the weaknesses are and re-assess the task or activity to better your workplace health and safety management.
Improvements
Risk assessments can highlight areas that require action to improve the workplace or work tasks. For example, mechanical aids to reduce the amount of manual handling required. Sometimes, improvements cannot be carried out straight away due to timeframes or budgets. However once improvements have been made, risk assessments need to be reviewed and updated as the risk level will have changed.
