Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires every employer to appoint one or more competent persons to help it comply with its health and safety duties. The regulations prefer that person to be an employee, but where no one in the business has the training, knowledge and experience, an external adviser fills the role. The appointment does not transfer the employer’s duties; it gives the employer the competence to meet them.
Section 2(3) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires every employer with five or more employees to have a written health and safety policy: a statement of intent signed at the top, the organisation that delivers it, and the arrangements that make it real. The arrangements section is the one that matters and the one most often copied from a template that describes a different business. Behind it sit the procedures, the legal register, the risk assessment library, the training records, the incident log and the contractor controls.
Leadership is the part the law now reaches directly. Section 37 of the 1974 Act makes a director personally liable where an offence was committed with their consent or connivance or through their neglect, and the HSE and Institute of Directors guidance, Leading health and safety at work, describes what a board is expected to do: plan, deliver, monitor and review. The adviser who sits in the director meeting, chairs the safety meeting and brings the improvement plan is doing the work that turns a policy into a culture.