Module 7:

Responsible use of equipment and materials

7.3 Carrying out a risk assessment

7.3.6 Competent person

1 Who is classed as a competent person?

Don’t panic, as a competent person doesn’t have to have formal qualifications, nor be a consultant, and is usually someone within an organisation who has “the skills, knowledge and experience to be able to recognize hazards in your business and help you put sensible controls in place to protect workers and others from harm.”

The process isn’t complicated and involving others at the club who might be carrying out tasks can help to more easily identify relevant hazards and risks. ( Appoint a competent person, HSE, accessed 14th July 2026)

“Competence in Health and safety should be seen as an important component of workplace activities, not an add-on or afterthought”. ( What is competence?, HSE, accessed 14th July 2026)

If the club doesn’t have someone who is competent then they might employ the services of a consultant to help them create their risk assessment and safe systems of work.

Safe System of Work

This involves an employer having formal procedures, including risk assessments, to ensure all activities can be undertaken safely with necessary controls put in place. Employees will have well described safe working practices (including safe working method statements) for tasks and will be trained in the implementation of these. A positive attitude and behaviour will form part of a good safety culture within an organisation, looking after the best interests of all workers.

Putting a created risk assessment into practice is still the responsibility of the club, they cannot just file away documentation that has been produced by themselves (so workers can’t readily view it) or someone else such as a consultant. Safe systems of work and risk assessments should be treated as live operational documents, which are there to help create a safe working environment for all concerned.

4 Activity

We have created a general Risk Assessment template (in both Word and pdf) which you can use to create your own risk assessment for a specific activity.

Download this example as a pdf file

Download this example as a MS Word file

Have a go at creating just part of your own sample risk assessment for any named activity. If you need to you can refer back to the example we have provided but try and consider what is actually taking place for your own situation. This activity will also help you to identify areas of uncertainty and these can then be explored further outside of this course. Don’t spend too long on this activity (maybe around 30 minutes) as its aim is to help you reflect on the process you need to carry out as part of your contribution to producing a safe system of work for yourself and other workers.

Module progress: 85%

7 | 7.1 | 7.2 | 7.3 | 7.4 | 7.5