Health & safety is everyone's business

However, many items, even some of the glaringly obvious, are all too often overlooked, with the ultimate cost to the business far outweighing the cost of introducing sensible initiatives in the first place. Along with increased financial costs, this can include needlessly putting lives at risk and/or being at odds with the law and authorities and having to deal with the consequences.

A couple of key considerations can help you determine whether or not the regime you have in place meets the necessary criteria to be a healthy and safe working environment.

What do you do, for example, about reducing the risks of trips, slips and falls? This is one of the main causes of injury in the licensed trade and is responsible for one-third of the accidents in the public area - particularly where many of the clients are in the older age group.

It is also wise to have risk assessments in place.

This is an important step in protecting your staff and your business. It helps you focus on risks that really are critical in your workplace - the ones that can potentially cause real harm but can be kept to an absolute minimum with an understanding of control measures.

And while on the subject of staff, are there procedures in place to ensure they are trained and understand the importance of good health and safety practices so that they can help minimise the risk of anything untoward happening to themselves, colleagues and customers?

Have checks been carried out recently to ascertain that personal protective equipment is in place and that all certification is correct? If not they should be, particularly for gas, electric and fire safety systems, which must be well maintained and checked on a regular basis. It is also sound practice to ensure fire exits are clearly identified along with emergency lighting and fire assembly points.

One final point to remember… if something looks wrong it invariably is! So be sure to query.