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Permit to Work eLearning
Online permit to work training: what a permit is for, who issues and accepts it, and why the handback is the step that gets skipped and kills people.
Who it is for
Who this permit to work course is for
A permit to work is a formal control for high-risk work: hot work, confined spaces, work on live systems, work at height in exposed positions. It fails when it becomes a form-filling ritual rather than a conversation.
- Maintenance and engineering teams
- Contractors working on client sites
- Site supervisors who issue or accept permits
- Facilities and estates staff
- Process, utilities and manufacturing operatives
- Anyone new to a permit-controlled environment
Course content
What the permit to work course covers
Six short modules covering the permit lifecycle from issue to handback, and the failures that occur at each stage.
What a permit to work is
A formal control for high-risk work, and what it is not.
When a permit is needed
Hot work, confined spaces, electrical work, excavation and other high-risk activities.
Roles
Issuer, acceptor, and the people doing the work: who is responsible for what.
Issuing a permit
Precautions, isolation, testing, time limits and clear scope.
During the work
Staying within scope, changes in condition, and when to stop and re-issue.
Handback and cancellation
Returning the area to safety, confirming completion, and closing the permit properly.
Outcomes
What you will be able to do afterwards
- Explain what a permit to work controls and why
- Recognise the work that requires a permit
- Say who issues, who accepts and who is responsible
- Understand the precautions a permit must specify
- Know when to stop work and have the permit re-issued
- Complete a handback properly rather than assuming
Your legal duty
The law behind permit to work training
No regulation is called the permit to work regulations. Permits are a control measure that comes out of risk assessment. They're required indirectly by the general duty to ensure health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable and by the requirement to assess risk.
Some specific regimes effectively require a permit-style control. Work in confined spaces, hot work in premises covered by fire safety law, and work on electrical systems all rely on the kind of formal control a permit provides.
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 - sections 2 and 3
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 - risk assessment
- Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 - where electrical work is involved
- No regulation names permits to work; they are a control that risk assessment produces
Practicalities
How the course works
For employers
Permit to Work training for a team
Permit systems fail at the interface between the site team and contractors, so both sides need the same understanding of what the paper means.
- One invoice instead of a card payment per person
- Licences allocated as people join, so induction is covered
- Completion and expiry reporting for your records
- Renewal reminders before certificates lapse
- Bespoke versions built around your own procedures
Most permit failures involve contractors, which is a management problem as much as a procedural one. See the Managing Contractors course →
Permit to Work eLearning: common questions
No regulation is named after it. Permits are a control measure that risk assessment produces for high-risk work, and some regimes effectively rely on that kind of formal control.
Someone competent and authorised under your own permit system, with the knowledge to specify the precautions. The course covers the roles rather than naming job titles, because systems differ.
Stop. The permit covers a defined scope under defined conditions. The course is explicit that carrying on outside the permit is where serious incidents happen.
Because an unclosed permit means the area is assumed unsafe, or worse, assumed safe when isolation is still in place. Handback failures cause a disproportionate share of permit-related incidents.
About 30 minutes, with no time limit. Start it, pause it, and come back whenever suits. The certificate is issued the moment you finish.
Yes. It runs in a browser on any modern phone, tablet or computer, with nothing to install.
Yes. Open a business account and we invoice you for the licences, which you allocate as people need them, with completion reporting included.
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