Preparing a Safety Statement.

• 1. Draw up a Safety Statement

This policy should spell out your commitment to ensuring the health and safety of your employees. The pre-formatted Statement at the end is an example of how a Safety Statement should be laid out.

Preparing and implementing a Safety Statement and keeping it up to date is the most important step in managing health and safety in your business. The safety Statement is based on the principle that safety can be managed because most accidents are foreseeable and can usually be prevented. A safety Statement can be prepared by following Such simple "actions" which are set out below. It need not take very long to prepare a Safety Statement for a small retail premises. You can use the pre-formatted Safety Statement enclosed to help you prepare your Safety Statement.

• 2. Identify the Hazards.

A hazard means anything that can cause harm (for example: moving parts of machinery, chemicals, manual handling of loads, electricity). Walk around your premises and look at what could reasonably be expected to cause harm. Ignore the trivial and concentrate on those hazards that could cause serious harm or effect several people. Ask your employees what they think- they may have noticed things, which are not immediately obvious.

• 3. Carry out a Risk Assessment

Risk is the likelihood, great or small, that someone will be harmed by the hazard together with the severity of harm suffered. Risk assessment is a careful examination of what, in your work, could cause harm to people, so that you can weigh up whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm. Assess and decide what employees could be harmed and how.

Categorising the risks (e.g. high risk of falling, medium risk of burn or low risk of electrocution) allows you to decide the priority given to putting the safety measures into place. Write down your assessment for each hazard.

• 4. Decide what precautions are needed.

You probably already have some safety precautions in place. Your risk assessment will tell you whether these are adequate or more should be done. Where you have found a hazard that needs to be managed, ask yourself:

• Can I get rid of the hazard altogether?

• If not, what safety precautions are necessary?

Health and safety laws provide guidance on the appropriate safeguards. For example, dangerous moving parts of slicers and mincers must be fitted with guards to prevent people from making physical contact with them.

Suppliers of machinery and chemicals must provide information on appropriate precautions. For example, suppliers of hazardous chemicals must provide you with a Material Safety Data Sheet. This outlines the dangers associated with the chemical and tells you what precautions you must take.Write the precautions down.

• 5. Record your findings.

You must write down the results of actions in your safety Statement. Give your employees and any other persons at your place of work, who may be effected by the activities being carried out, access to the Safety Statement. You should also explain to them what they must do in order to prevent injury.

• 6. Review your programme and update.

Review your Safety Statement at least once a year. Are you and your employees complying with the precautions you set down? Have new and significant hazards been introduced into the workplace and does the Safety Statement need to be amended to take them into account?.