Self-employed workers - Overview

1. Overview

If you are a self-employed worker, these pages will help you:

understand when health and safety law applies to you
decide if your work poses a risk to others
comply with the law if applies to you

Who a self-employed worker is under the law

For health and safety law purposes, 'self-employed' means:

you do not work under a contract of employment^[5]
you work only for yourself

If you are self-employed but employ others the law will apply to you. You may be self-employed for tax purposes, but this may not be the case for health and safety.

It is a complex area and it may help you to read the advice from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in their employment status guidance about working for yourself (on GOV.UK)^[6].

View a printable version of the whole guide^[8]

Link URLs in this page

When health and safety law applieshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/self-employed/does-law-apply-to-me.htm
Deciding if your work activity creates a risk to othershttps://www.hse.gov.uk/self-employed/risk-to-others.htm
High-risk work activities that apply to the self-employedhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/self-employed/high-risk-activities.htm
How to comply with the law if it applies to youhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/self-employed/what-the-law-says.htm
contract of employmenthttps://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/investigation/status-contract.htm
employment status guidance about working for yourself (on GOV.UK)https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself/what-counts-as-self-employed
NextpageWhen health and safety law applies https://www.hse.gov.uk/self-employed/does-law-apply-to-me.htm
View a printable version of the whole guidehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/self-employed/print.htm
Health and safety law poster, free leaflet and pocket cardhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/lawposter.htm
Health and safety basics for your businesshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/
Managing risks and risk assessment at workhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/index.htm