Outsourced Health & Safety Manager

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 for a competent H&S manager in the North West: £45,000 to £60,000
  • Employer's NI and pension: £7,000 to £10,000
  • Vehicle or mileage: £3,000 to £6,000
  • CPD, professional membership, qualifications: £1,500 to £3,000
  • Recruitment fee, one-off at 15 to 20 per cent: £7,000 to £12,000
  • Cover during the vacancy: two to four months of carrying the risk yourself

Fully loaded, you are looking at £60,000 to £80,000 a year, for one discipline.

An outsourced arrangement runs £6,000 to £19,800 a year depending on the level of cover, and the same person covers quality and environment alongside safety.

That comparison isn't perfectly fair, and we would rather say so than have you work it out later. A full-time manager is on your site every day; an outsourced one is there on agreed days and reachable in between. Whether the difference matters depends on your risk profile. For a lot of 100 to 300 person manufacturers it doesn't, because the full-time manager was spending two days a week on work that didn't need him.

When outsourcing is the right call

  • Single site, moderate risk, 50 to 300 staff. The classic case. Two days a month of the right person beats five days a week of the wrong one.
  • You've lost your manager and the duty hasn't paused. Cover starts in days rather than the three to six months a hire realistically takes.
  • You need more than one discipline. Safety, quality and environment in one arrangement rather than one specialist and two gaps.
  • The role has never justified itself commercially. You need the duties covered and the audits passed, not an empire.
  • You want to test the shape of the job before writing a permanent job spec, and see what the role actually consumes across a year.

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.

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
  • Presence at customer audits, insurer visits and HSE inspections

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.

It's the same arrangement we describe from the retainer side on the Fractional HSEQ Advisor page. Different word, same job.

Interim cover when someone has already left

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

  • £250 a month for a named competent person, remote support and quarterly visits. Small, low-risk sites with a capable internal contact.
  • £500 a month for a monthly site day, audit programme, risk assessment reviews and incident support. Most single-site manufacturers.
  • £1,050 a month for two days on site and full ownership of the system. The genuine alternative to hiring.
  • £1,650 a month for three to four days, multiple sites or a heavier improvement agenda.

Additional days are £400 to £600. Ad-hoc work outside a retainer is £750 a day. The full detail sits on the Fractional HSEQ Advisor page.

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. Elsewhere in the UK where the travel makes sense for both sides.

Worth a twenty-minute call

Whether you are 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.

Get in touch · Compliance Health Check · Health & safety consultancy