The Importance of your Safety Statement in relation to your Insurance Cover
The purpose of a Safety Statement is to help employers and business owners identify risks that may cause injury to employees. It is a written document, required by law, that states how a business will manage safety. It will include details of the risks as well as how you, or the business, is going to mitigate against these risks. The Safety Statement also clearly identifies the person or people who are responsible for health and safety.
The Safety Statement should be kept up to date – particularly if your business changes and your employees are potentially exposed to new hazards. At the very least, it should be reviewed annually.
All business owners and self-employed workers must have a current up to date safety statement that includes site specific risk assessments for the type of work that is carried out. This is the law and also a condition of your insurance policy. The actual wording of this condition is as follows:
‘It is a condition precedent to liability under this Policy that the insured shall have an adequate safety statement as required by Section 20 of the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005’.
Essentially this means that if you are unfortunate enough to have an employee injured during the course of his or her employment with you, the insurance will look for your safety statement before it agrees to deal with and pay out on your claim or potential claim.
Safety Statements are easy to do. We recommend the ‘BeSmart.ie’ system and we include instructions on how to use it here. Click here for more details