The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (Regulation 7) states that the employer shall:

'Appoint one or more 'competent persons' to assist in undertaking the measures necessary to comply with relevant legislation (including fire precautions) and shall:

• make arrangements for ensuring adequate cooperation between appointees
• ensure appointees have available adequate time and means to fulfill their functions
• ensure appointees not in their employment (e.g. consultants, contractors) are informed of factors known or suspected by the employer to be a risk to H&S, and have access to any information provided to employees
• ensure appointees are given information about any temporary workers.

NB - A competent person (CP) is defined as a person with sufficient training, experience, knowledge or other qualities to assist in undertaking the duty (in law, a person may be an individual or an organisation).

Independent Health and Safety Advice (IHASA) recognises that not all employers have either the resource or the time to appoint an individual in-house to train as a 'competent person' as defined within the 'Management' Regulations.

Therefore we offer a special 'competent person' retainer rate designed to help take the worry away from wondering where you are going to find the resource to comply with the bewildering array of Regulations, leaving you alone to carry on running your business.

You can find a breakdown of our normal rates by clicking here, but this page details the special 'competent person' rate as follows: