External Competent Person Service

Every employer in Great Britain has to appoint at least one competent person to help them meet their health and safety duties. It isn't optional, it doesn't scale down with company size, and "we've got a lad who does the risk assessments" is not on its own a defence.

Most manufacturers we meet are covered on paper and thin in practice. The name on the form left two years ago, or holds a certificate that lapsed in 2019, or has never been given an hour a week to do the job.

What Regulation 7 actually requires

Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires you to appoint one or more competent persons to assist you in complying with your legal obligations.

Three things follow from that, and firms routinely miss all three.

  • The appointment has to be real. Named, aware they have been appointed, and given the time and the authority to act on what they find.
  • Internal comes first in principle. The regulation prefers a competent person from within your own business where one exists. Where one doesn't, external appointment is entirely proper and explicitly provided for.
  • Competence is judged against your risks. A general certificate does not make someone competent for LEV, confined spaces, or a process handling hazardous substances at scale.

You can appoint more than one person, and most manufacturers should. One individual rarely covers machinery safety, occupational health, fire and contractor control equally well.

Who counts as competent

The regulations deliberately avoid defining competence as a qualification list. In practice an inspector, an auditor or an insurer is looking at four things:

  1. Relevant training and qualifications
  2. Real experience of your kind of operation
  3. Understanding of the specific hazards on your site
  4. The authority and the time to do something about them

The fourth one catches people out. Appointing your production manager as competent person and then giving him no hours for it fails the test regardless of what his NEBOSH certificate says.

Why firms appoint externally

  • Nobody internally is qualified. Common below 200 staff, and normal in businesses that have grown fast.
  • Someone is qualified but has no capacity. The certificate exists. The time doesn't.
  • Your competent person has just left. The duty doesn't pause while you recruit.
  • A customer or insurer has asked who yours is and the answer needs to be better than a name on a wall.
  • You want a second opinion in the building. An internal person plus an external one is a stronger arrangement than either alone, and it is how most well-run sites do it.

What we cover

As your appointed external competent person you get:

  • A named individual whose details go on your documentation, not a call-centre rota
  • Reasonable access between visits for the questions that can't wait
  • Review and sign-off of your risk assessments and method statements
  • Legal register and compliance monitoring, so a change in the law doesn't pass you by
  • Health and safety policy and arrangements reviewed and kept current
  • Incident and near-miss support, including investigation and RIDDOR judgement calls
  • Attendance at HSE or enforcement visits where required
  • A written annual statement of the arrangement for your files, your insurer and your customers

Visit frequency is set by your risk profile rather than a standard template. A single-shift assembly operation doesn't need the same cadence as a two-site business running hot work and forklifts across three shifts.

What appointing us does not do

It does not transfer your legal duties. Those stay with the employer and with directors personally, and no consultant can take them off you. What the appointment does is give you competent assistance, which is exactly what the regulation asks for, and evidence that you took the duty seriously.

We also don't sign off things we haven't seen. Where a piece of plant or a process falls outside what we can properly assess, we say so and bring in a specialist rather than put a signature on it.

What it costs

Starts at £250 a month on our Anchor retainer: named competent person, remote support, document review and a quarterly site visit. That is the floor for a genuine appointment rather than a paper one.

Most manufacturers with real process risk sit at £500 a month for monthly site visits, an internal audit programme and risk assessment reviews, or £1,050 a month for two days on site and full ownership of the safety management system. The full ladder is on the Fractional HSEQ Advisor page.

Ad-hoc work outside a retainer is £750 a day, which is why almost nobody buys this duty by the day.

How to appoint

  1. A short call about your operation, headcount, sites and the risks you actually carry.
  2. A site visit, or a Compliance Health Check where you want the wider picture at the same time.
  3. Written appointment covering scope, named person, visit cadence, and a statement you can hand to an auditor or insurer.

Usually two to three weeks from first call to appointment in place.

Our article on what Regulation 7 actually requires goes into the legal detail if you want the background first.

Where we work

Greater Manchester and the North West as standard: Manchester, Bolton, Bury, Stockport, Rochdale, Oldham, Preston, Blackburn, Warrington and Altrincham. See all areas we cover. Appointments elsewhere in the UK where the travel works for both sides.

Talk to us about an appointment · Health & safety consultancy · Fractional HSEQ Advisor