HEALTH & SAFETY
Outsourced Health & Safety Manager
The same duties, real presence on your site, agreed days rather than five a week - and a fee that stops when you stop.
An in-house H&S manager costs about £68,000 a year, every year. Outsourced, the same role is £12,600 — from £3,000 where a lighter level of cover is enough.
Three situations bring people to this page. Your H&S manager has resigned. You are about to advertise for one and the budget conversation has stalled. Or you have run the numbers on £70,000 all-in and can't square it against what the role actually produces.
An outsourced health and safety manager does the job without the headcount. The same duties, real presence on your site, agreed days rather than five a week, and a fee that stops when you stop.
The arithmetic nobody puts in the job advert
Salary is the smallest part of what an in-house H&S manager costs.
Salary Competent H&S manager, North West
£45,000 – £60,000
£45,000 – £60,000
Employer's NI 15% above £5,000
£6,000 – £8,250
£6,000 – £8,250
Pension 3–5% employer contribution
£1,200 – £2,200
£1,200 – £2,200
Vehicle or mileage
£3,000 – £6,000
£3,000 – £6,000
CPD, professional membership, qualifications
£1,500 – £3,000
£1,500 – £3,000
Recruitment fee 15–20% of salary
£7,000 – £12,000
—
Fully loaded
≈ £77,000
≈ £68,000
Plus the bit that doesn't appear on any spreadsheet: two to four months of vacancy while you recruit, carrying the risk yourself.
Employer NI is 15% on earnings above £5,000 for 2026/27. The £10,500 Employment Allowance offsets some employer NI, but a business of 50 to 300 people will have used it all on existing payroll — so an additional hire attracts the full rate. Totals are the midpoint of each range.
Against that
£6,000 – £19,800 a year, depending on the level of cover
Like for like with an in-house manager, Embedded is £12,600 a year.
The day-rate question
One thing a finance director will reach for straight away: per day on site, an employed manager is cheaper. Around £310 a day, against a retainer that buys one site day a month plus everything in between.
That's true, and it's the wrong measure. The retainer isn't the site day — it's the calls, the document reviews and the “can we do this before Thursday” questions between visits. And the employed manager has that access too, all day, every day, which is rather the point.
Neither arrangement is really measured in day rates. You're not buying days. You're buying coverage of a fixed set of duties, and those duties are identical either way. What differs is the total cost of covering them — £68,000 a year against £12,600 — and whether your site has enough work in it to justify the difference.
If it does, hire someone. That's the next section, and we mean it.
When you should hire instead
We'd rather lose the enquiry than take on a site that needs someone there daily.
Hire, don't outsource, if you run a COMAH-tier site, if you have a permanent contractor population on site, if you are in the middle of enforcement action, or if you run 24/7 across multiple shifts and safety leadership has to be visible on all of them.
In those cases we'll say so on the first call, and if it's useful we'll help you write the job spec and sit on the interview panel. We do that fairly often, and it costs nothing.
When outsourcing is the right call
01
Single site, 50–300 staff
The classic case. A day a month of the right person beats five days a week of the wrong one.
02
You've lost your manager
The duty hasn't paused. Cover starts in days rather than the three to six months a hire realistically takes.
03
You need more than one discipline
Safety, quality and environment in one arrangement rather than one specialist and two gaps.
04
The role never justified itself
You need the duties covered and the audits passed, not an empire.
05
You want to test the shape
See what the role actually consumes across a year before writing a permanent job spec.
What the role covers
Everything an in-house manager would own, minus the desk.
Health and safety policy, arrangements and the competent person appointment under Regulation 7
Risk assessments and safe systems of work, reviewed when the process changes rather than annually by ritual
Accident and near-miss investigation, root cause, corrective action tracking and RIDDOR calls
Contractor and visitor control, permits, and induction content
Legal register and compliance monitoring
Statutory inspection scheduling and evidence: LOLER, PUWER, LEV, pressure systems
Toolbox talks and training needs analysis, plus delivery of in-house sessions
Internal audit programme and management review
ISO 45001 system ownership where you're certified or working towards it
Board reporting in one page, in language a finance director can act on
An outsourced manager is not a consultant
Worth drawing the line, because the words get used interchangeably and they shouldn't be.
A consultant
Does projects.
You buy a gap analysis, a system build, a batch of risk assessments, and the engagement ends with a deliverable.
An outsourced manager
Holds the role. Nobody hands you a report and leaves.
The accident from March is still being followed up in June. The training matrix is somebody's actual responsibility. When your biggest customer asks who your health and safety manager is, there's a name and a phone number.
Whats included?
| Anchor | Active | Embedded | Embedded Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Named competent person on record | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Remote support | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Document review | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Site days | Two a year | Quarterly | 1 day a month | 2 days a month |
| Annual scored assessment | Snapshot | Health Check | Health Check | Health Check |
| Six-month action plan check-in | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Internal audit programme | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Risk assessment reviews | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Incident support | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Toolbox talks and awareness sessions | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Training matrix maintenance | – | ● | ● | ● |
| Full safety management system ownership | – | – | ● | ● |
| Legal register maintained | – | – | ● | ● |
| Contractor management | – | – | ● | ● |
| Certification body liaison | – | – | ● | ● |
| Quarterly board reporting | – | – | ● | ● |
| Improvement projects | – | – | – | ● |
| Cultural work with supervisors | – | – | – | ● |
| Support for adding further standards | – | – | – | ● |
| Multi-site coverage | – | – | – | ● |
Interim health and safety manager cover
If your manager has gone and you're mid-recruitment, we do short-term cover on the same terms as a retainer, with a three-month minimum instead of six.
That usually means being on site within a week, taking over the live issues first - open incidents, imminent audits, statutory inspections falling due - then stabilising the system while you recruit. Where you want it, we'll hand over properly to whoever you appoint rather than disappearing on their first morning.
A fair number of those interim arrangements turn permanent, because the business works out that it didn't need the headcount after all. We don't push it either way.
What it costs
Anchor
£250/ month
Named competent person, remote support, document review and two site visits a year, with an annual scored compliance review.
Suits: the floor for a genuine appointment rather than a paper one.
Active
£500/ month
Quarterly site days, an internal audit programme, risk assessment reviews and an annual Compliance Health Check.
Suits: most manufacturers with real process risk.
Embedded
£1,050/ month
One day a month on site, full ownership of the safety management system and an annual Compliance Health Check.
Suits: where nobody internal holds the role.
Embedded Plus
£1,650/ month
Two site days a month or two sites, plus improvement projects, cultural work with supervisors and further standards.
Suits: multi-site, or where the role has real scale.
Common questions.
Salary is £45,000 to £60,000 for a competent manager in the North West, but that's roughly two thirds of the real number. Add employer's NI at 15% above £5,000, pension, a vehicle or mileage, CPD and professional membership, and a recruitment fee at 15 to 20 per cent, and year one lands near £77,000 with about £68,000 recurring after that. The vacancy period while you recruit doesn't appear on any spreadsheet and is usually two to four months.
How much does it cost to employ a health and safety manager in the UK?
1
In total cost yes, substantially - around £12,600 a year against £68,000. On a day rate the two are much closer, and on site days alone an employed manager is cheaper. But day rate is the wrong measure for both: you're buying coverage of a fixed set of duties, not days, and the duties are the same either way. The question is whether your site has enough work in it to justify the difference. Most single-site manufacturers under 300 people have perhaps thirty days of genuine health and safety work in a year, not two hundred and twenty.
Is outsourcing actually cheaper than hiring?
2
Usually on site within a couple weeks. Interim cover runs on the same terms as a retainer with a three-month minimum rather than six. We take the live issues first - open incidents, imminent audits, statutory inspections falling due - then stabilise the system while you recruit, and hand over properly to whoever you appoint.
How quickly can you start if our manager has already left?
3
5
6
What happens between visits?
When should we hire someone instead of outsourcing?
Can an outsourced manager be our competent person under Regulation 7?
4
Yes, and it's normally part of the arrangement. The appointment is named, written down and covers scope and visit cadence, so you have something to show an auditor or insurer. Worth knowing that Regulation 7 covers one of five separate competent person duties in law - the detail is on our competent person page.
You get reasonable access for the things that can't wait - an incident, an enforcement visit, a customer audit landing at short notice. The distinction that matters isn't visit frequency, it's whether someone owns the open actions when they're not on site. An outsourced manager does; a consultant delivering a project doesn't.
If you run a COMAH-tier site, have a permanent contractor population, are in the middle of enforcement action, or run 24/7 across multiple shifts where safety leadership has to be visible on all of them. In those cases we'll say so on the first call, and we'll help you write the job spec and sit on the interview panel if it's useful. That costs nothing.
Worth a twenty-minute call
Whether you're replacing someone, deciding whether to hire, or covering a gap, twenty minutes will tell you which of the two this should be. If the answer is hire, we'll say so.
Where we work. Greater Manchester and the North West as standard: Manchester, Bolton, Bury, Stockport, Rochdale, Oldham, Preston, Blackburn, Warrington and Trafford. Appointments elsewhere in the UK where the travel works for both sides.