The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (often shortened to MHSWR or "the Management Regulations") are the UK rules that turn the general duty in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 into specific, practical steps. They require employers to assess risks, plan and organise how those risks are controlled, appoint competent help, train people and prepare for emergencies. If you run a warehouse, workshop, stockroom or any workplace with staff, they apply to you. This guide walks through the duties regulation by regulation and shows where storage and handling equipment fits into the picture.
What are the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999?
The regulations are Statutory Instrument 1999/3242 and came into force on 29 December 1999. They are made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and apply to almost every employer in Great Britain. They sit above the more specific regulations that cover particular hazards, such as PUWER for work equipment, the Manual Handling Operations Regulations for lifting and carrying, or COSHH for hazardous substances. Where those regulations tell you what to do about one hazard, the Management Regulations tell you how to find, rank and manage all of them as a system.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) publishes plain-English guidance on managing risk at work, including its five-step approach to risk assessment, and the full text of the regulations is on legislation.gov.uk. This article summarises the main duties and is not legal advice.
Regulation 3: risk assessment
Regulation 3 is the heart of the regulations. Every employer must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees while at work, and of other people affected by the business, such as contractors, visitors and agency staff. The assessment has to be reviewed if it is no longer valid or if something significant changes, for example new equipment, a new layout or an incident.
If you employ five or more people, you must record the significant findings of the assessment. Smaller employers still have to carry out the assessment but are not required to write it down, although many do so because it makes review and training easier.
HSE describes risk assessment as five practical steps:
- Identify the hazards. Walk the site and look at what could cause harm: vehicles, stacked stock, work at height, manual handling, hazardous substances, noise, slips and trips.
- Decide who might be harmed and how. Think about staff, new starters, cleaners, drivers, visitors and anyone with particular needs.
- Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions. Ask whether the hazard can be removed, and if not, what controls reduce the risk as far as is reasonably practicable.
- Record your findings and put them into practice. Write down the significant findings if you have five or more employees, and make sure the controls are actually in place.
- Review the assessment and update it if necessary. Do this regularly and whenever something changes.
Regulation 4: the principles of prevention
Where an employer implements preventive and protective measures, regulation 4 requires them to be based on the principles of prevention set out in Schedule 1. In plain terms that is a hierarchy: avoid risks where you can, evaluate those you cannot avoid, combat risks at source, adapt the work to the individual, take advantage of technical progress, replace the dangerous with the non-dangerous or less dangerous, give collective protective measures priority over individual measures, and give appropriate instructions to employees. In a warehouse this means designing the hazard out of the job first, for example by providing a pallet stacker so that nobody lifts a heavy load by hand, and only then relying on training, signs or PPE.
Regulation 5: health and safety arrangements
Employers must make and give effect to appropriate arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measures. Again, if you have five or more employees these arrangements must be recorded. This is what many businesses call their health and safety policy arrangements: who does what, how inspections happen, how defects are reported, how equipment is maintained and how performance is checked.
Regulation 6: health surveillance
Where the risk assessment shows that health surveillance is appropriate, the employer must provide it. This applies when there is an identifiable disease or adverse health effect linked to the work, and a reasonable likelihood that it could occur, for instance hearing checks where noise is a problem or skin checks where employees work with certain substances. Our guides to the Noise at Work Regulations and COSHH Regulations 2002 cover two common examples.
Regulation 7: competent persons
Every employer must appoint one or more competent persons to help them meet their health and safety duties. A competent person is someone with sufficient training, experience and knowledge to do the job properly. Where possible this should be someone from within your own business, such as a manager or supervisor who has had suitable training. If you do not have the necessary skills in-house, you can use an external adviser. The employer must give the appointed people the time, information and resources they need, and make sure that their number and the time they have are adequate for the size and risks of the business.
Regulations 8 and 9: emergencies and external services
Employers must establish procedures for serious and imminent danger, nominate competent people to put them into effect, and make sure that people cannot enter danger areas without adequate instruction. In practice that means fire and evacuation arrangements, spill and incident response, clear emergency routes and people who know what they are doing when something goes wrong. Employers must also arrange any necessary contact with external emergency services, particularly for first aid, emergency medical care and rescue work. Our guide to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 covers the fire side of this in more detail.
Regulations 10, 11 and 13: information, co-operation and training
- Information (regulation 10). Employees must be given comprehensible and relevant information about the risks to their health and safety, the preventive measures, the emergency procedures and the competent people appointed to help.
- Co-operation and co-ordination (regulation 11). Where two or more employers share a workplace, such as a multi-let warehouse, they must co-operate and co-ordinate their health and safety measures and share information about risks.
- Capabilities and training (regulation 13). Employers must take account of employees' capabilities when giving them tasks and must provide health and safety training when they are recruited, when they are exposed to new or increased risks, and repeated periodically where appropriate. Training should take place during working hours.
Regulation 14 and the duties of employees
Employees have duties too. Under regulation 14 they must use equipment, substances and safety devices in accordance with the training and instructions they have been given, and tell their employer or the nominated person about any situation that represents serious and immediate danger, or any shortcoming in the protection arrangements. This is why clear, usable equipment matters: if a safe way of working is awkward, people improvise.
Young workers and new or expectant mothers
The regulations require specific risk assessments for people under 18 (regulation 19), taking account of their inexperience, lack of awareness of risk and immaturity, and for new or expectant mothers where the work could involve a risk to them or their child. If either group works at your site, check the assessment covers them explicitly rather than assuming the general assessment is enough.
How the Management Regulations connect to your equipment
A risk assessment is only useful if it leads to practical changes on the shop floor. Typical outcomes in a warehouse or workshop include:
- Safer work equipment. The assessment may show that staff are lifting heavy loads by hand or reaching up to high shelves. Handling aids, steps and platforms address that. Read our guide to PUWER for what employers must then do to select, inspect and maintain that equipment.
- Segregating people and vehicles. Where pedestrians and trucks share routes, safety barriers and marked walkways reduce the chance of an impact.
- Controlled storage. Racking that is installed, loaded and inspected properly keeps stock stable, and our guides to racking inspection and pallet racking explain what to look for.
- Somewhere for people to keep their belongings and PPE. Staff lockers and industrial cupboards keep gear clean, dry and out of walkways.
- Hazardous substances stored properly. Where the assessment identifies chemicals or flammable liquids, the right cabinet and bunding are part of the control measures.
For a wider overview of workplace hazards and the regulations that deal with them, see our warehouse health and safety guide, and for the wider welfare duties see the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Treating risk assessment as a one-off document that is filed and forgotten, rather than reviewing it when layouts, equipment or tasks change.
- Copying a generic template without walking the site and talking to the people who do the work.
- Failing to record significant findings once the business has five or more employees.
- Appointing a competent person on paper without giving them the time, training or authority to act.
- Ignoring agency workers, contractors and visitors who are also affected by the work.
- Relying on signs and instructions when a physical control, such as a barrier or a handling aid, would remove the risk.
- Training new starters once and never repeating it when risks or equipment change.
Where to find the official guidance
The regulations are published on legislation.gov.uk as SI 1999/3242, and HSE explains how to manage risk at work, including a risk assessment template and worked examples, on its website. If your business has complex or high-hazard activities, take advice from a competent health and safety professional. This guide is general information for UK workplaces and is not legal advice.
Related guide: Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005 covers hand-arm and whole-body vibration duties.