The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 — and why the fire duty is no longer here

What they require

These Regulations put practical shape on the general duties in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The central obligation, in regulation 3, is that every employer must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of employees and of others affected by the undertaking.

Beyond the assessment itself, they require arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective measures; the appointment of competent persons to assist; health surveillance where the risk assessment identifies a need; and procedures for serious and imminent danger.

What this means in practice

Regulation 5 — the requirement for arrangements — is the one that does most of the work and gets least of the attention. It is what turns a risk assessment from a document into a system: someone has to plan, organise, control, monitor and review, and an organisation that can produce assessments but cannot show that anything follows from them has satisfied regulation 3 and not regulation 5.

The competent-person requirement in regulation 7 is the other provision worth knowing well. It is about the person having sufficient training, experience, knowledge and other qualities — not about holding a particular certificate.

The fire duty is no longer here

This is the correction most worth making on this page, because the misconception is common and durable.

Regulation 3 used to carry fire-specific content. It does not now. That content was removed in England and Wales by the Fire Safety Order with effect from 1 October 2006, when the fire risk assessment duty passed to the Order, and parallel amendments were made for Scotland under the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005.

So a fire risk assessment that cites regulation 3 of these Regulations as the source of the duty is citing the wrong instrument, and has been for nearly twenty years. The duty for non-domestic premises in England and Wales sits in the Fire Safety Order; in Scotland, in Part 3 of the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005. These Regulations remain the source of the general risk assessment and management duty within which fire safety arrangements sit.

Where they stand

In force since 29 December 1999, fully commenced, with no outstanding effects recorded at the date checked. The self-employed duty was narrowed by the Deregulation Act 2015 from 1 October 2015.

One caveat on currency: legislation.gov.uk did not display an "up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before" line for this instrument when checked, so the date on this page is the date we verified it rather than a currency the source itself vouched for. The page did state that there are no known outstanding effects.