As an employer, you must ensure that any individual performing a task on your behalf has the competence to do so without putting the health and safety of themselves or others at significant risk.

What is competence?

Competence can be described as the combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge that a person has and their ability to apply them to perform a task safely. Other factors, such as attitude and physical ability, can also affect someone’s competence.

As an employer, you should take account of the competence of relevant employees when you are conducting your risk assessments. This will help you decide what level of information, instruction, training and supervision you need to provide.

Competence in Health and safety should be seen as an important component of workplace activities, not an add-on or afterthought.

Someone’s level of competence only needs to be proportionate to their job and place of work. You would not need, for example the same health and safety competence to work in an office as you would on a construction site.

Competent person

As an employer, you must appoint a ‘competent person’ to help you meet your health and safety duties.
A competent person is not someone who simply has the competence to carry out a particular task safely. In general terms, the definition of a competent person is someone who has the necessary skills, experience and knowledge to manage health and safety.

Some health and safety law describes the training, skills and experience, that someone should have to be a competent person to perform a specific task in a particular industry or work environment.