Write a health and safety policy for your business

Your business must have a health and safety policy. If you have five or more employees, you must have a written policy.

Most businesses set out their policy in three parts:

• the statement of general policy section sets out your commitment to managing health and safety effectively, and what you want to achieve
• the responsibility section states who is responsible for what
• the arrangements section contains the detail of what you are going to do in practice to achieve the aims set out in your statement of general policy

Help to write a health and safety policy

You may find that there are some areas of health and safety policy that you need help with. You may be able to get help from Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) or the environmental health department of your local authority. If the issues are complicated, you may need to seek external advice

HSENI provide the following downloads to help you create your policy:

• example health and safety policy
• health and safety policy template

Environmental policy

You may want to consider environmental issues at the same time as considering your health and safety policy. If you have an environmental management system, your environmental policy should be a part of this. For further information see set up an environmental management system (EMS).