Health & Safety Legislation
Why Health & Safety Matters
The hospitality and catering industry involves sharp knives, hot ovens, heavy equipment, and hazardous cleaning chemicals. Without proper health and safety measures, employees and customers are at serious risk of injury or illness. UK law places responsibilities on both employers and employees to maintain a safe working environment. The WJEC specification requires you to know five key pieces of legislation, understand risk levels, and be able to apply HACCP principles.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
This is the main piece of health and safety legislation in the UK. It places a duty of care on employers to provide a safe working environment, safe equipment, adequate training, and protective clothing. Employees must follow safety procedures, use equipment correctly, report hazards, and not put themselves or others at risk. The Act applies to every workplace, including kitchens, restaurants, and hotels.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 is the overarching law. Employers must provide safe premises, equipment, and training. Employees must follow procedures, use equipment properly, and report hazards.
COSHH — Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002
COSHH requires employers to assess and control the risks from hazardous substances in the workplace. In hospitality, this covers cleaning chemicals (oven cleaners, bleach, sanitisers), gases, dust, and biological agents such as bacteria. Employers must identify which hazardous substances are used, assess the risks, provide protective equipment (gloves, goggles), train staff in safe handling, store chemicals correctly (locked cupboards, away from food), and keep records.
Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992
These regulations cover the lifting, carrying, pushing, and pulling of heavy objects. In a kitchen, staff regularly move heavy boxes of supplies, large pans of hot liquid, and catering-sized equipment. The regulations require employers to avoid hazardous manual handling where possible, assess the risk of any handling that cannot be avoided, and reduce the risk of injury by providing trolleys, training in correct lifting technique, and ensuring loads are not too heavy for one person.
PPER — Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992
PPER requires employers to provide suitable personal protective equipment free of charge where risks cannot be controlled by other means. In hospitality and catering, this includes oven gloves for handling hot trays, safety goggles when using cleaning chemicals, non-slip shoes to prevent slips on wet kitchen floors, and cut-resistant gloves when using mandolins or meat slicers. Employees must use the PPE provided and report any damage.
RIDDOR — Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013
RIDDOR requires employers to report specified work-related incidents to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Reportable incidents include deaths, specified injuries (such as most fractures and amputations), injuries that prevent an employee from working for more than seven consecutive days, work-related diseases, and specified dangerous occurrences. Deaths, specified injuries and dangerous occurrences must be notified without delay. An over-seven-day injury must be reported within 15 days. Records of reportable cases must be kept for at least three years.
The specification requires you to understand how risks are classified. Low risk — unlikely to cause harm, or harm would be minor (e.g. a paper cut from a menu). Medium risk — could cause moderate harm and is reasonably likely (e.g. a slip on a wet floor causing bruising). High risk — likely to cause serious injury or death (e.g. a deep fat fryer fire or a severe allergic reaction). Risk assessments consider who might be harmed (employers, employees, suppliers, customers) and what level of risk they face. The higher the risk, the more control measures are needed.
Documentation: Accident Forms and Risk Assessments
Employers must keep two key types of health and safety documentation. Accident forms record what happened, who was injured, when and where it occurred, and what action was taken. They create a legal record and help identify patterns (e.g. repeated burns from the same oven). Risk assessments identify hazards, assess who might be harmed and how seriously, and set out the control measures in place to reduce the risk. Risk assessments must be reviewed regularly and updated when circumstances change.
Employers are responsible for the health and safety training of all staff. This includes induction training for new staff, ongoing refresher training, and specific training on hazards relevant to each role.
HACCP — Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points
HACCP is a systematic approach to food safety. It requires businesses to identify every stage of food production where something could go wrong (a critical control point), and put measures in place to ensure risks are removed or reduced to safe levels. For example, a critical control point might be checking the temperature of delivered meat — if it arrives above 8°C, it must be rejected.
The WJEC specification requires you to be able to: 1. Identify critical control points and ensure risks are removed or reduced to safe levels. 2. Decide what actions to take if something goes wrong (corrective actions — e.g. reject a delivery, re-cook food to the correct temperature). 3. Complete a HACCP document that records the hazard, the critical control point, the control measure, and the corrective action. 4. Complete records to show that procedures are working (e.g. temperature logs checked daily, cleaning schedules signed off). HACCP is a legal requirement for all food businesses in the UK.