are you having construction work done on your behalf?

When commissioning any form of construction or building work (unless domestic), you, as a client of those undertaking the work, have your own health and safety duties to follow. In the past, much of this responsibility has been the job of supervisors, but now as well as the duties that contractors, sub-contractors and architects face, the client has a responsibility under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM 2007).

A useful guide to these responsibilities can be downloaded in full from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website, http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg411.pdf. Outlined below is a summary of these responsibilities

For any project, you must look at:

In addition, if your construction project is going to last longer than 30 days, or involve more than 500 person days of work, you need to also do the following:

• keep the health and safety file

Breaching the regulations can lead to various sanctions, including prevention of future work and prosecution.

For more information on health and safety in the construction industry, please click here to visit the HSE website Construction homepage. You may also like to read our article on the CDM 2007 Regulations, which can be found here.

For more information, contact John Mitchell, a partner in Blake Lapthorn's Health and Safety team on 023 8085 7231; email john.mitchell@bllaw.co.uk.