Health and safety representatives
If you are a health and safety representative, you will find useful information here to help you do your work, and materials that you can use in your workplace.
Health and safety representatives have functions given by law.
- If you are a trade union-appointed health and safety representative, your functions are set out in the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977
- If you are a representative of employee safety, your functions are set out in the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations 1996
Contacting HSE's Concerns and Advice team
If you are a Trade Union Safety Representative, you can contact the Health and Safety Executive about something that has either caused, or has the potential to cause significant harm; by completing the Concerns and Advice form for safety representatives.
To use this facility you must:
- be a safety representative, appointed by a Trade Union under the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977
- have tried to resolve the issue using your powers under those Regulations
If you are not a Trade Union appointed safety representative, but need to contact us, go to Workplace health and safety concerns.
Once you have completed the form, you should save it and send it by email to [email protected].
If you do not have access to email, you can print it off and post it to:
Health and Safety Executive,
Concerns and Advisory Team,
Redgrave Court,
Merton Road,
Bootle,
L20 7HS
Guidance
HSE supports the vital contribution health and safety representatives and trade unions make to maintaining and improving health and safety in the workplace. HSE has provided the TUC with the "Brown Book" (Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977, Approved Code of Practice and guidance) for training purposes.
HSE places great importance on worker involvement and consultation, which has proved to be key factor to improving health and safety in the workplace.
We have recently published a suite of new and revised guidance on worker involvement and consultation. A web-version of the good practice guidance "Involving your workforce in health and safety" with additional material is available on our Worker Involvement website.
Whatever type of health safety representative you are, you need information and materials to help you do your work. You can find helpful information in our good practice guidance on:
You can use these forms to record the results of your inspection.
A Word version of both these forms (F2534 and F2533) is also available.
Useful information
The TUC's website provides information on how to help develop practical proposals for improving health and safety organisation in the workplace [PDF 132KB] and how to prepare and carry out a workplace health and safety inspection [PDF 243KB]. You may also wish to find out more about the trade union effect.
Education employers and employees demonstrate that they recognise the contribution that partnerships make towards improving health and safety standards at work.