Safety-critical equipment register and record of checks

If you have safety-critical equipment, you need to consider what happens when it goes missing or gets broken. Use our forms to ensure you have it covered.

What’s safety critical?

There may be some items of equipment which you’ve found to be essential to health and safety in your workplace. These may have been identified through risk assessments, accident investigations or staff suggestions.

These items might be a critical part of your risk control strategy, yet there’s a risk that they’re forgotten about. Stocks of disposable items could run out and other equipment might disappear.

Unlike first aid kits and fire extinguishers, you may not have a system for checking them. Instead you might have to wait for a manager or safety conscious employee to notice the item is missing, but in the meantime this could result in an accident.

To resolve this problem use our Safety-critical Equipment Register and Safety-critical Equipment Record of Checks.

How to use them

List the equipment on the register and describe how it is to be checked, e.g. “hop-up step”, and “readily available in the stationery cupboard”. Then note how often you wish to check using the columns provided.

Don’t write down every tiny thing you can think of. The idea of these documents is to deal with safety-critical equipment only.

When carrying out your inspections you have a choice between the two forms marked “(Option 1)” and “(Option 2)”.

For very simple checks use one “record of checks (Option1)” form per item. Record in the columns provided the date of each check, name of staff member, signature and any comments or action required. This allows for one line per record.

For more complex equipment including fixed access equipment and fall protection arrangements (gantries, barriers, fixed ladders), choose “record of checks (Option 2)”.  In this case use one form each time you undertake an inspection.

Note. Our form “Record of checks (Option 2)” has been designed to help you comply specifically with the Work at Height Regulations 2005. It will also be suitable for other situations where a more detailed record of inspection is warranted.