The Five Steps to Risk Assessment (UK)

The HSE sets out risk assessment as five straightforward steps. Follow them in order and you produce an assessment that is suitable and sufficient and that a client or an inspector will recognise. Here are the five steps in plain terms, with a worked example.

Step 1: identify the hazards

Walk the job and note anything with the potential to cause harm: working at height, power tools, dust, chemicals, moving vehicles, manual lifting, slips and trips. Ask the people doing the work, because they see the near misses.

Step 2: decide who might be harmed and how

For each hazard, name who is at risk and the way they could be hurt. Include your own workers, other trades on site, visitors and members of the public.

Step 3: evaluate the risk and decide on controls

Judge how likely harm is and how serious it would be, then set out what you will do to reduce it. Work down the order of control: remove the hazard if you can, then reduce it, then guard against it, and use personal protective equipment last.

Step 4: record your findings

Write down the hazards, who is at risk and the controls. If you have five or more employees this record is a legal requirement, and it is the document clients want to see.

Step 5: review and update

Look at it again when the job changes, when something goes wrong, or at least once a year. An assessment written for one site does not automatically fit the next.

A worked example

For a firm replacing guttering: the hazards are falls, dropped tools and manual handling; those at risk are two operatives and passers by; the controls are a tower scaffold, an exclusion zone, tool lanyards and shared lifting. Recorded on one page, dated and signed, that is the five steps done.

For the full method with more detail, see our guide to writing a risk assessment. Our template follows these five steps so you can fill it in for your job.