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Health and safety consultants in Stoke, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool
Appoint Acadame as your competent person and get a named consultant, documented risk assessments, a written policy and somebody to talk to the HSE on your behalf. Based in Stoke, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool, working nationwide.
Why this exists
Every employer needs competent advice. Most do not need it full time
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to appoint one or more competent people to help them meet their duties. There is no headcount threshold on that one. If you employ anybody, it applies to you.
On top of that, once you have five or more employees your health and safety policy has to be written down and your significant risk assessments have to be recorded. Most of the businesses that call us know all this. What they do not have is somebody in house whose job it is.
Hiring a full time health and safety officer is one answer. A retainer is the cheaper one, and for a lot of small and medium firms it is the right one. You get the expertise when you need it and you are not carrying the salary when you do not.
- A competent person appointed in writing
- A policy and arrangements that stand up to scrutiny
- Risk assessments that are suitable, sufficient and current
- Somebody to call before you make the decision, not after
What is included
What the retainer covers
ISO certification
Management systems: 9001, 14001 and 45001
Quite a lot of the work we do is helping firms get to ISO certification, or keeping them there once they have it. Quality, environment and occupational health and safety, separately or as one integrated system.
That covers writing the documentation, running internal audits, preparing you for the certification body's visit and picking up the non-conformances afterwards. If you already hold certification and it has drifted, we will tell you honestly how far.
Worth knowing: OHSAS 18001 was withdrawn in 2021 and replaced by ISO 45001. If your manual still references 18001, that is one of the first things to put right.
- ISO 9001 quality management
- ISO 14001 environmental management
- ISO 45001 occupational health and safety
- Internal audit, gap analysis and certification support
How it starts
From first call to appointed
A conversation
Tell us what you do, how many people you employ and what you already have in place. Fifteen minutes on the phone is usually enough for us to know what you need.
A visit
A consultant comes to your premises or your site, looks at the work as it is actually done, and reads whatever documentation exists.
An honest gap list
What is missing, what is wrong and what is fine. In priority order, with the legal duty each item sits under, so you can see what is urgent and what can wait.
Appointed and working
We are named as your competent person, the retainer starts and the gap list gets worked through. You get one account manager who stays with you.
Questions we get asked
The Starter retainer is £175 a month plus VAT. The first payment covers three months up front and monthly payments begin from month four. Larger or higher risk businesses need more time than Starter includes, so we will quote that properly after the first visit rather than guess at it now.
You have to appoint one or more competent people to help you comply with health and safety law. That can be somebody inside the business if they are genuinely competent. Where it cannot be, it has to come from outside, and that is what this is.
Usually, yes. Most policies we are shown were written once and never revisited, and they describe a business that has since changed. A policy that does not match how the work is actually done is worse than useless if something goes wrong.
Ring us first. We will deal with the correspondence, attend the visit and speak to the inspector on your behalf. That is included in the retainer, not charged as an extra when you most need it.
Yes. We work from Stoke-on-Trent, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool but consult nationwide, and a good deal of the work is on client sites well outside those four.
The advice about what training you need is. The courses themselves are quoted separately, at our normal rates, and we run almost all of them ourselves so there is no third party in the middle.
Start with a conversation, not a contract
Tell us what you do and what you have in place. If you do not need us, we will tell you that too.
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