Health and Safety is there, but doesn’t feel under control

In my experience providing health and safety support to small businesses across Norfolk, this is one of the most common patterns I encounter.

It could start with a casual chat in the pub with a friend. One of their colleagues hit a deer while out driving for work in rural Norfolk last week. He was ok and was able to continue his journey. But it sparked something in your mind.

What if one of our employees does the same thing?

“That’s ok”, you think. “We have a vehicle checklist somewhere.”

But is it in date? Does anybody use it? And if they do, are the completed checklists being reviewed and any defects acted upon?

The harsh truth is that many small businesses think they have something in place. In reality, there may be few meaningful control measures behind it, whether that's access to competent advice, regular reviews or clear ownership of responsibilities. The harsher truth is that many businesses know that it doesn’t feel under control.

In 2026, I began my own research into SMEs in the Norfolk area on how health and safety is managed. It started with a general question:

“How do you manage health and safety?”

The replies varied.

• “We use a major external consultant who comes and tells me off every six months about the same thing.”

• “Jim is in charge of that; we leave everything to him.”

• “Luck.”

All three of those answers suggest that health and safety may exist within the organisation, but not necessarily under control.

Getting health and safety wrong can have serious consequences for employees, customers and the business itself. Beyond the legal requirements, poor arrangements can lead to disruption, lost time, damaged reputation and unnecessary cost.

That's why the goal isn't paperwork. It's confidence that the important things are actually being managed.

A Risk Readiness Report by insurers, Hiscox, in 2023 (https://www.hiscox.co.uk/business-blog/hiscox-risk-readiness-report), concluded that almost 1 in 3 SMEs do not have a risk assessment policy in place. That is about 1.8 million businesses in the UK. The survey carried out by OnePoll also found that 25% of businesses do not prioritise health and safety.

Once the realisation hits that you share a common theme with other businesses, it becomes easier to acknowledge. So, what do you do about it?

You might not currently employ anybody with the right level of proficiency to take on the responsibility for health and safety. The budget might not allow you to take anybody on with that level of knowledge either and, proportionately, your business might not be at a scale to need one.

The best advice always comes from people who know their expertise inside out. A competent health and safety adviser is what your business needs, but one that works alongside you to provide practical guidance, clear priorities and manageable improvements.

So, you decide to bring in some support from a local, experienced health and safety adviser to review your arrangements.

Your health and safety adviser arrives to a raft of ring binders full of paperwork dating back to the company’s inception. The latest health and safety policy and risk assessments are neatly arranged on top, but there is a problem. They haven’t been reviewed in over two years.

This would often be the first sign of panic, and wanting to explain it away, or even change the date on the front of it to make it appear like the current version. But there is no danger in acknowledging the facts at this point.

Realistically, even though the policy hasn’t been reviewed for a few years doesn’t alter the fact that it is the current version and one that the business and its employees should be referring to.

But the policy sits in the ring binder, unavailable to be viewed by Steve in supplies.

The health and safety adviser is there to help you. They will probably say, “I can see health and safety is there, but it needs pulling together to bring it under control.”

The first task is to assign someone to take ownership of all of this, someone to be the site contact for your health and safety support. Someone to collate the documentation and work through pulling everything together with your adviser. That might not be the Business Owner, the CEO or the MD – there is already far too much on their plates. It might be another senior manager within the organisation, who can oversee the day-to-day and report back to everyone else.

It will make the difference between having something in place, and having it under control.

It will feel like an avalanche of priorities after that first visit, and you might feel dejected that the ring binder has been pulled apart, exposing the hidden or forgotten truths. You may have two pages of action points that you want to get started with there and then, but you don’t know where to start.

The best health and safety adviser will help you prioritise the actions and reassure you that the task is not insurmountable.

The easiest way forward is usually to tackle the improvements one project at a time. Logically speaking, good health and safety management is a collection of instructions and processes written down. They must reflect what actually happens in your business and be bespoke to it.

It is no good having a template risk assessment that talks about amusement rides if you are running an IT consultancy.

Similarly, it is no good referring to vehicle tracking being active if there is no tracking device present.

Or that contractors use the signing in book at reception, but the book was replaced with a digital system six months ago.

By now, you will have had numerous interactions with your health and safety consultant. Some of the questions you will have had might have felt silly, but they need asking to find the right direction in the process. You will suddenly find yourself in a much stronger place.

• A live health and safety policy, bespoke to your organisation and available for all of your employees to read at any time,

• A suite of risk assessments that tell the story of how you are keeping your employees safe,

• A tidied-up governance structure, which might be the ring binder, or it might be an online storage area, such as OneDrive or Share Point,

• A plan for an annual review of all policies and procedures.

The interesting thing is that most of the individual improvements won't feel revolutionary. A policy gets updated. A risk assessment gets reviewed. Somebody takes ownership. Documents are stored in a sensible place. Yet taken together, those small changes create something much more valuable: confidence that health and safety is being managed consistently.

This is the difference between having something in place and having it under control.