Health and Safety Consultancy / Health & Safety Audits Gloucestershire
Health & Safety Audits Gloucestershire
Highlight safety systems and management failures with a comprehensive audit to prevent workplace safety incidents.
Safety Hands Plus have qualified and competent auditors on hand to support your internal, external, accreditation, or pre-accreditation audits or inspections.
Health and Safety Auditor
Audits are a formal and structured process of collecting information and evidence of the operational effectiveness of the management systems that are in place, audits try to ensure your company is compliant. Safety audits are undertaken to establish an organisation’s compliance with the legislation, standards, and/or industry best practice. The results from these audits are used to formulate corrective actions, guidance, and for planning for improvements to the management system(s). They can also support the senior leadership in setting the goals, vision, direction and establishing clear objectives and targets for the organisation to follow.
Safety audits can be undertaken both internally and externally. External audits are often completed by a certification body issuing a certification to one of the recognised standards (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001). External audits can be undertaken by any qualified auditor and these are an essential part of attaining or retaining any ISO certification.
Audit findings should assess the day to day planning, arrangements, activities, and record keeping against the policies and company objectives. A failure in a management system can often result in an incident, injury, or worse. Auditing a system can often identify a possible failure prior to any incident and/or injury and the evidence can be used to deliver the most appropriate corrective or preventative action to amend the management system.
The HSE define safety auditing as:
The collection of independent information on the efficiency, effectiveness, and reliability of the total health and safety management system and drawing up plans for corrective actions.
Safety audits are beneficial because they:
- Ensure the success of the safety management system
- Maintain constant opportunities for review
- Provide external verification
- Reduce losses
- Improve skills and knowledge
- Identify weakness or error
- Aid continuous improvement
- Demonstrate a real commitment to safety
Why Do an Audit?
One simple reason to complete safety audits is to comply with the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 and the significant Regulations that support this Act making it a legal requirement. More often than not, when the HSE investigate major incidents the investigation will highlight safety systems and safety management failures being a root cause for cases.
How to Conduct Safety Audits
As mentioned previously there are two main ways to audit your organisation. Internally and externally; here are some pros and cons for both:
Internal Audits
External Audits
Still unsure about Audits?
Safety Hands Plus would be more than happy to advise you on choosing the correct audit system to meet your organisation’s requirements. We are experts in all manner of audits ensuring you get the benefit of our experience, knowledge, and best practices.