Health and safety

If your business is a public facing organisation, Redbridge Council is responsible for ensuring that you conform to health and safety legislation.  

If your organisation is higher risk (a factory, a building site, a chemical plant or nuclear installation), then the Health and Safety Executive will be responsible for monitoring you, not Redbridge Council. 

Environmental Health Officers (EHOs)

Our EHOs aim to prevent accidents and ill-health and will:

• inspect workplaces to ensure that any work risks are managed properly
• help people to meet their legal responsibilities
• make good practice recommendations
• investigate accidents or occupational ill-health
• explore complaints regarding working conditions and/or practices
• act as a source of advice on any aspect of health and safety

Why we might visit?

We will visit if we feel that:

• your employees or the public are at risk from unsafe activities within your business. 
• there has been an accident in the workplace
• your workplace is due a general inspection

Arranging a visit

Inspections are usually unannounced but can be made by appointment where necessary. 

Environmental Health Officers will probably want to talk to managers, employees, health and safety representatives and other interested persons. 

What else we will do during an inspection

In addition to looking around your premises, officers will examine safety-related paperwork such as:

• risk assessments (if applicable)
• plant maintenance and inspection records
• training records
• accident records
• health and safety policy statement (if applicable) 

At the end of the visit you will be advised by the officer what further action, if any, is going to be taken.  You may be contacted in writing and any correspondence will include useful and relevant advice on what you need to do.

Reporting a concern about health and safety

If you consider that your employer's (or someone else's) work activity is putting your safety at risk, then you should raise your concerns with that employer or person. 

If no improvement is made and your safety continues to be at risk, then you can report your concern to the relevant enforcing authority (Redbridge council - for offices, shops, hotels, restaurants, leisure premises, nurseries, pubs & clubs, care homes; or the Health and Safety Executive for higher risk sites - factories, building sites, nuclear installations, schools, fairgrounds, hospitals).

Contact the Health and Safety Executive

Enforcing Health and Safety Law

If the inspector finds a breach of health and safety law, the inspector will decide what action to take.  The action will depend on the nature of the breach and be based on the principles set out in the Enforcement Policy Statement.