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Business

We are the health and safety enforcing authority for a wide range of workplaces and premises including:

  • shops

  • restaurants and cafes

  • takeaways

  • hotels, caravan sites and campsites

  • offices

  • warehouses

  • places of worship

  • hairdressers and beauty therapists

  • tattooing and body piercing

  • tyre and exhaust premises

We have a team of officers who carry out inspections of businesses, investigate complaints and investigate accidents and near misses.

What can officers do?

The law gives a wide range of power to our officers, including:

  • entering premises to carry out their duties

  • carrying out investigations and examinations

  • taking measurements, photographs and samples

  • taking possession of articles and equipment 

  • requiring people to provide information

  • taking statements from people

  • inspecting and copying documents

  • issuing Improvement Notices

  • issuing Prohibition Notices

What action can we take?

If there is a breach of health and safety law, then the officer can take several courses of action, which most likely are:

  • issue an informal warning – this will provide information and advice about  improvements that can be introduced

  • serve an improvement Notice – this is a formal enforcement notice which will detail what is wrong with any procedures and/ or practices, what to do to fix them and will specify the  date by which the improvements must be introduced

  • serve a prohibition notice – this is a formal enforcement notice to deal with a risk of serious personal injury. It requires a work activity or a process to stop immediately and will stay in force until all issues are resolved and the notice is lifted by us

  • prosecution – this is likely to follow non-compliance of an improvement notice or a prohibition notice or after an investigation of a serious accident in the workplace.