How Long Must Health & Safety Records Be Kept?

As a business, you need to keep Health & Safety records. There are many you need to document, so it’s essential to understand what details you should keep track of.

We can help you with your Health & Safety record keeping requirements. A quick phone call and we’ll talk you through you legal responsibilities: 0800 028 2420.

Our guide also explains the importance of this management and how to go about it.

What Health & Safety records must be kept?

There are various records you must keep as part of your Health & Safety document management.

The different type of Health & Safety records include the following:

• Accidents and incident investigations.
• Risk assessments
• Purchase of plant and equipment and their technical files.
• Maintenance of plant and machinery.
• Health & Safety training and development of employees.
• H&S information provided to contractors
• Hazardous substances subject to the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH).
• Statutory occupational health surveillance records.
• Hazardous substances subject to the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations (DSEAR). Records and reports made to comply with the Reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations.
• Fire safety checks – alarms systems, emergency lighting, extinguishers, fire doors etc.
• Procedural records.
• Health and safety manuals.
• Employment records – including medical records.
• Hazardous Waste disposal.
• Asbestos at work assessments and surveys.
• Noise surveys and investigations.
• Hand arm vibration exposure records and assessments
• Manual handling assessments.

And in the event of an accident on your premises, you must document the incident in an accident record book at work.

However, you must never falsify official documents - as this could land you and your business in trouble.

What should be recorded in an accident record book?

It’s a legal requirement to record all work-related accidents and injuries. And you should do this in an accident record book.

When you document an incident, the information should contain details of any accidents that take place on your property and to your employees wherever they are working. If one occurs, then it’s essential you follow the right procedure.

You should document the following details:

• The date and time of the accident.
• The injuries that occurred.
• Who was involved.
• The nature of the injuries.
• The cause of the accident, if you know.

How long to keep Health & Safety records?

While it’s not a legal requirement to keep records forever, you do need to keep information for a certain amount of time.

There are a number of documents you have a statutory requirement to keep for a certain time. These include the:

• List of employees exposed to group three and four biological agents (10 years).
• Exposure to Hazardous Substances in the Workplace (up to 40 years depending on the record).
• Reportable Injuries, disease and dangerous occurrences (three years).
• Accident book (three years from last entry).
• Asbestos at work—survey and health surveillance (40 years from last incident).

While these documents are important, legislation can change and make them eventually redundant.

While it’s paramount to retain documents for a certain period, it’s also essential you dispose of them formally and in line with current legislation.

Where should Health & Safety records be kept?

Many organisations don’t keep their Health & Safety records in one place.  

And while this leads to communication problems, it’s also challenging to try and locate documents for:

• An audit.
• An inspection.
• A review.
• Evidence gathering.
• For planning.

It’s important to have the right system in place to ensure you can locate documents as and when you need to.

So, how can you go about storing this information for your business?

Methods of recording health & safety inspections and data

With so many vital documents to keep, and over such a long length of time, storage and security is a dilemma for many companies.

The Bright Health & Safety management system allows to store all records in one secure place. We recommend a digital system for many reasons.

It’s BrightSafe and the benefits include:

• Organisational ease, with sorting your records in the order you require.
• Retrieval ease, as you can quickly locate the document(s) you require.
• Log accidents securely in the system.
• Assign staff tasks such as formal investigations, ensuring you keep in control of your deadlines.

Of course, security is an essential requirement for your business. The system is cloud-based, so data you upload it secure at all times.  We operate to and are accredited to ISO 27001 – Information Security Systems.

It’s also accessible from wherever you are in the world. And if you’re a Bright customer, you have access to 24/7 support from our expert team.

If you need anything else…

Get in touch and we can assist you with any Health & Safety requirements you have: 0800 028 2420.