Straightforward
Health & Safety Advice for Small Businesses

Every business has responsibilities for managing health and safety, regardless of its size. Employers must appoint one or more competent people to help them meet their health and safety duties. This may be someone within the business where they have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience, or external support may be used where additional advice is needed.

H&S Advisor provides small businesses with access to professional health and safety advice, helping you understand your responsibilities and deal with day-to-day H&S questions as they arise.

Where possible, we believe health and safety competence should be developed and maintained within your business, supported by external professional advice where needed. Those within your organisation understand your workplace, people and day-to-day activities better than an external adviser ever can.

While some consultancies offer to act as your external Competent Person, appointing an external adviser does not transfer responsibility for managing health and safety away from the employer.

H&S Advisor takes a different approach. We provide competent external health and safety advice and support to the people managing health and safety within your business, helping them understand their responsibilities, make informed decisions and identify when further specialist support may be required.

You can contact us for advice on a wide range of workplace health and safety matters. This could include risk assessments, health and safety policies, workplace hazards, PPE, manual handling, training requirements, accident reporting and general questions about your H&S responsibilities.

Our aim is to provide straightforward, practical guidance that you can understand and apply within your business. Where an issue requires specialist support or falls outside the scope of your package, we’ll let you know.

Our packages are designed to give businesses different levels of access to professional health and safety advice and support.

Advice Lite provides reasonable-use advice by email, ideal for businesses that want professional guidance available when questions arise.

Advice Unlocked adds telephone support and priority responses, giving you quicker access to professional advice when you need it.

Advice Insight includes everything in Advice Unlocked, together with an annual workplace health and safety visit, written report and prioritised action plan.

Packages start from £39 per month + VAT, allowing you to choose the level of support that suits your business without paying for services you don’t need.

Our plans are designed to give you access to professional health and safety advice when you need guidance or have a question.

“Reasonable use” means normal day-to-day requests for advice and guidance relating to your business. There is no set limit on the number of questions you can ask, but the service is intended for advice rather than carrying out substantial consultancy work.

Advice Lite provides reasonable-use advice by email, with responses normally provided within two working days.

Advice Unlocked and Advice Insight provides reasonable-use advice by email and telephone, with priority responses when you need advice more quickly.

Requests involving significant document preparation or review, detailed investigations, project work, site attendance or other substantial consultancy work may fall outside your subscription. If this happens, we’ll always let you know before any additional work or cost is agreed.

Our Certificate of H&S Support provides evidence that your business has access to professional health and safety advice through H&S Advisor.

The certificate can be used as supporting evidence where clients, contractors, PQQs or SSIP assessments ask how your business obtains competent health and safety support. However, individual clients and SSIP schemes set their own assessment requirements, so the certificate does not guarantee that a particular requirement will be satisfied or that an application will be approved.

H&S Advisor is designed primarily for small and medium-sized businesses with straightforward health and safety support requirements.

Some high-risk, specialist or heavily regulated activities may fall outside the scope of our subscription service. This may include areas such as nuclear activities, demolition, offshore operations and other work requiring specialist technical expertise.

We consider each business individually. If your activities fall outside our areas of competence or require specialist support, we’ll let you know and, where appropriate, recommend that you seek advice from a suitably qualified specialist.