Owners, managers and staff: who does what for health and safety, in plain terms.
It is one of the most common questions we hear, usually asked quietly after something has gone slightly wrong. A guest trips on a loose step. A member of kitchen staff scalds a hand. An inspector calls. And the room goes still while everyone works out whose name is on the line.
The honest answer is that health and safety is shared across a few roles, but not equally, and knowing who carries what makes the whole thing a lot less stressful. Here is how it works at a hotel or a holiday park, in plain terms.
The primary health and safety duties normally sit with the employer or operating business. In Great Britain, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act requires employers to protect their employees and, so far as is reasonably practicable, people affected by the undertaking, including guests, contractors and delivery drivers. Depending on the business structure and what has happened, individual directors, managers or employees may also have personal duties or liability.
The law does not require every conceivable risk to be removed at any cost. Controls should be proportionate to the risk. The precise legal dutyholder depends on whether the operation is run by a company, partnership, sole trader or another organisation, but the business cannot avoid its duties simply by delegating day-to-day tasks.
Above the day-to-day, the people at the top carry their own weight. Where the owner or the directors treat safety as something that matters, that attitude runs down through the whole site. Where they treat it as someone else's problem, that runs down too.
In certain circumstances, a director or senior manager may face personal action where an offence occurred with their consent or connivance, or was attributable to their neglect. Senior leaders should therefore receive meaningful information, ask appropriate questions and make sure adequate time, people and money are available to manage significant risks.
A responsibility that lives only in a folder does nothing. Managers and supervisors are the ones who turn it into daily practice: keeping the fire doors clear, making sure the cleaning rota is followed, showing the new starter how the slicer guard works before their first shift.
Your staff have a part too, and it is a simple one. Everyone is expected to take reasonable care of themselves and the people around them, to use the training and equipment they have been given, and to speak up when something is not right. It also means not misusing the things that are there for safety, so wedging a self-closing fire door open with a bin is not just annoying, it puts people at risk and it is the sort of thing everyone shares a duty to avoid. A team that feels able to say "that step's come loose" is worth more than any amount of paperwork.
Most hotels and parks bring in a competent person for expert advice, and that role is genuinely valuable. The one thing it does not do is move your responsibility onto someone else's shoulders. An adviser helps you understand your risks, keep your assessments current and make good decisions. The job of actually managing safety stays with the business. We look at what a competent person is in a separate article, so here the point is only where they sit in the picture: alongside you, not instead of you.
Fire safety has its own legal dutyholders. In England and Wales, the legislation uses the term "responsible person"; Scotland and Northern Ireland use different terminology. The precise dutyholder depends on factors such as employment, ownership and control of the premises. A competent fire risk assessor can carry out the assessment and advise, but the relevant legal dutyholder remains responsible for ensuring the assessment is suitable, kept current and acted upon.
If there is one thing worth taking from all of this, it is that appointing a consultant, a competent person or a fire risk assessor never hands your responsibility to them. You can bring in the workload and the expertise. You cannot pass the responsibility across. That is not a loophole to worry about. It is simply how it works, and once you know it, the whole subject feels a good deal more manageable.
What good outside help does is make the responsibility easier to carry: the right arrangements, kept current, and someone experienced to call when a decision needs getting right.
That is the role we play. Our Fractional Head of Health and Safety and retained support give hotels and holiday parks access to senior safety support, helping managers keep arrangements current and follow through on the responsibilities that remain with the business. If you would like to map out who holds what at your site and where the gaps are, get in touch and we will review it with you.
Senior safety support that helps managers keep arrangements current and follow through on the responsibilities that stay with the business.
See the ServiceWe will review responsibilities at your site and show you where the gaps are.