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The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has issued guidance on the responsibilities of company directors, which sets out the roles and responsibilities of the board.

This guidance applies to companies of all sizes. It outlines what the HSE sees as good practice at board level; in the event of prosecutions or civil actions, following good practice is important. It says that while the board needs to take a collective role in providing health and safety leadership, every director has an individual role too.

The HSE adds that directors need to ensure that their business decisions live up to their (legally required) health and safety policy statement. The legal requirement for a written policy applies to firms with five or more employees, but all companies are required to manage health and safety risks.

Specifically, HSE guidance looks for directors to:

• review health and safety performance – at least annually;
  
• ensure that a management system provides effective risk assessment and the monitoring and reporting of health and safety performance, using, for example, regular audits;
  
• be kept informed about any significant health and safety problems and of the outcome of investigations;
  
• ensure that they take account of the health and safety implications of company plans and decisions.

The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) recommends that company boards appoint a health and safety director. Although this is not a legal requirement, it is again good practice. The role of such a health and safety director would be to ensure that the board, collectively, is discharging its responsibilities, and that health and safety issues are communicated within the company.

[The HSE guidance] says that while the board needs to take a collective role in providing health and safety leadership, every director has an individual role too

Legal requirements
Employers must ensure that they discharge their duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, and the general requirements of the Management of health and safety at work regulations 1999.

These include:

• assessing work-related risks faced by employees and others – notably contractors and the public;
  
• having effective arrangements in place for planning, organising, controlling, monitoring and reviewing safety measures;
  
• appointing competent persons to help comply with health and safety laws;
  
• providing employees with comprehensible and relevant information on the risks that that they face and the measures that control those risks.

Where a 'body corporate' commits a health and safety offence that had the "consent or connivance of, or was attributable to any neglect on the part of, a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate", that person and the body corporate can be prosecuted (s37 of the Health and safety at work etc Act 1974).

Finally, there are no legal minimum health and safety qualifications for directors. Any training must be determined on a case-by-case basis.