Chapter 1: Identify the hazards - the theory
1.1 The theory
The first step
As outlined in the introduction, the first step to risk assessment is to “Identify the hazards”.
The law requires you to identify all reasonably foreseeable, non-trivial hazards. As the judge in a 1932 civil case put it, there is no need to protect against “fantastic possibilities” such as Mr Harcourt-Rivington’s normally docile terrier smashing the window of a car, causing an eye injury to Mr Fardon, who happened to be walking past at the time.
This finding has been reinforced repeatedly, including in R v Chargot (2008) “employers do not need to consider risks that are trivial or fanciful”. If harm is not foreseeable, an employer cannot be expected to protect against it.
But what is a hazard?
Image: Steve Buissinne at Pixabay
What is a hazard?
In the 1998 version of INDG 163, the HSE defined a hazard as “anything that may cause harm” giving examples of chemicals, electricity, working from ladders, “etc”. The 2014 version of INDG 163 dropped the definition. The best the HSE offers as I review this in 2026 is:
Look around your workplace and think about what may cause harm (these are called hazards).
Aside from the poor grammar, this ‘I spy’ approach implies hazards are only things you can see by looking.
Well-known safety courses continue to use definitions based on previous HSE definitions with three elements:
- A thing expressed as anything or something;
- A possibility or probability expressed as “may” or “potential”;
- Harm, damage or adverse effect, assumed to be to the health or safety of people but could be harm to the environment.
1.2 Why the theory doesn't work in practice
Legal cases can hinge on whether or not something should have been identified as a hazard. As the definition of a hazard given above suggests, we need to know what things are, how probable an adverse event is relating to that thing, and how harmful the thing could be. But we don’t know what Things are, we are not good at probability, and we leave people out. We will look at each of these problems in turn
1.3 We don't know what Things are
At school I learnt a rhyme called “The Nine articles of grammar”. It included the line:
A noun’s the name of anything, as school or garden, hoop or string (John Neale, 1886).
Hazards are easiest to identify when they are solid objects, such as hoops or string, or in the workplace, vehicles, machinery or tools. Although the HSE gives examples of activities (working from ladders) and invisible things (noise) “anything” or “something” draws us to more concrete objects. We see the ladder, rather than the work on the ladder.
A news story in 2019 illustrates this misidentification of the hazard. The headline accused the regulator of being “Daft as a Brush” with the sneering explanation that a furniture maker was “banned from sweeping factory with broom after inspectors brand it a ‘health hazard’”. The article declared: “Brooms a health hazard? Quick, alert the families who have used them for generations.” The broom is the most visible thing in the photos of the furniture workshop featured in the article. But consider the case again:
Ask yourself
What is the thing with the potential to cause harm? What is the hazard?
See Appendix 2 for my answer to this question.
Even if you can identify all the physical things, however small, that might be hazards, you might still miss something important. In the rhyme “Things” include places such as schools and gardens, or in the workplace, confined spaces, walk-in ovens, high roofs and cold rooms. The rhyme doesn’t mention that in some circumstances, actions can be things. Entering a confined space, working at height, using a vibrating tool can all be hazards.
Do not list the absence of things as hazards, such as “missing PPE”, “lack of training” or “no guard on machine”. If goggles are needed to protect the eyes from flying debris, the debris is the hazard. “Not wearing safety goggles”, “lack of guarding” and “inadequate training” are failed controls.
Watch out too for positive activities such as “housekeeping”, “training”, “good lighting” and “communication” in the hazard column, with an unstated implication that the lack of the activity is a hazard. Unless you are risk assessing the work of housekeeping, it is not the hazard. Unless you are risk assessing training activities (such as climbing a ladder during a work at height course) training is not a hazard. In most cases, these are controls, which we’ll talk about in Chapter 11.
Another very common error in risk assessments is for the outcome of a hazard to be listed rather than the hazard itself. For effective control of risk we must be clear about the hazard, and likely hazardous events. Figure 1.1 illustrates the sequence of events, and Table 1.1 provides examples of hazards, hazardous events and consequences.
Figure 1.1: Hazards and hazardous events
Table 1.1: Defining hazards
| Hazard | Hazardous event | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Oil on floor | Slip and fall | Injury eg broken bones |
| Uneven floor surface | Trip and fall | Injury eg broken bones |
| Vibrating tools | Prolonged use resulting in excessive exposure to vibration | Numbness, reduced grip strength, HAVS |
| UV from welding | Eyes exposed to UV light | Eye damage |
As we’ll see in Chapter 3, there are other factors to consider in between these three steps, but the distinction between the hazard, the hazardous event and the consequence is sufficient for this chapter.
Box: Will BREXIT lead to potentially dangerous PPE?
Unlike the “Daft as a broom” headline, this one appeared not in a popular tabloid, but sadly in a magazine targeted at OSH professionals.
Does this mean PPE with sharp edges that could cut you? Or PPE with toxins that can leak and harm your skin? Well, no, it means PPE that might not provide the level of protection required. A serious enough concern, but voicing it in this sensationalist way suggests that PPE is the hazard, rather than the (sub-optimum) control
1.4 Probability is difficult
If the hazard was not reasonably foreseeable, the accused cannot be expected to have put controls in place to prevent it. We can foresee an alien invasion, but it isn’t very likely. (See Box: Space Shuttle landing on the Shard). So although at first sight, we appear to be able to leave consideration of probability until later in the risk assessment, when we assess or evaluate the risk, probability is there at the start. Which presents a problem.
To be considered as reasonably foreseeable, the potential of a hazard for harm must be sufficiently severe, and the likelihood sufficiently high. To decide if something should be identified as a hazard in step 1 you have to carry out step 2, assess risk (see Figure 1.2). Is my hot mug of coffee a hazard? The probability that the coffee leads to an accident at home might be low, and the consequences would be limited. With more mugs of coffee, longer carrying distances, and more people around, the probability of a spill might be higher in an office, but still with limited consequences. If the coffee is carried from the teachers’ staff room to the infants’ classroom, the possibility of scalding a small child running in a corridor is both more likely, and with a potentially higher consequence.
Figure 1.2: The circular nature of identification and assessment
Whether the potential is high enough for the thing to be considered as a hazard necessarily requires judgement. The coffee at home has such a low potential for harm that it can be considered trivial. The coffee in a school corridor might need to be documented as a hazard.
When an accident has never happened, it is easy to assume that it won’t. But, with hindsight, those who suffer harm are likely to consider that the potential was significant. If the injured party takes a civil case against an employer for not identifying a hazard, or if the regulator determines that the hazard could have been identified, it is up to the courts to decide, whether or not the thing should have been identified as a hazard.
When a three-year-old child died in hospital, having fallen down some steps in the playground, the HSE investigated (R v Porter, 2008). The child should have recovered from the head injury, but, he died from a hospital-acquired infection. The HSE took two years to decide to prosecute the headteacher, and it took a further two years before the case came to court.
Steps might be a hazard in a dark corridor, or in a care home with residents at risk of falls and with deteriorating eyesight, or being used alone by someone prone to epilepsy. But for steps in a children’s playground, where there had been no injuries reported in nearly 30 years of children playing on the steps, does the probability reach the threshold to be defined as a hazard?
For a crown court jury of lay people, the answer was yes. They found the head teacher guilty by a majority of eleven to one.
The little boy had not fallen, he’d jumped. It’s understood he was pretending to be Batman. The height he jumped was described in a news report (BBC 2008) as “that of a standard household settee.” He was nearer to four-years-old than three. Would you supervise a nearly four-year-old constantly in your own living room for fear that your sofa was “a hazard”?
Nine months after the jury trial, a panel of three judges overturned the decision. The judges understood that the tragedy of this child’s death did not alter the facts: the steps, under normal circumstances, were not a hazard of sufficient potential to warrant controls over and above normal playground supervision.
The “conkers bonkers” type stories illustrate the problem of assessing whether a hazard is trivial. Such stories are not always as straightforward as they might seem. Conkers might have become a significant and avoidable cause of playground accidents. In the 2019 “Daft as a Brush” story the journalists failed to appreciate that while sweeping the floor might be a trivial hazard when done at home, it becomes a significant hazard in a workshop full of an asthmagen like wood dust.
This misunderstanding not only by the journalists, but by the owner of the furniture company also illustrates how we are heavily influenced in our assessment of likelihood by the timescales over which a harmful outcome is realised. An injury from a fall from height is immediate and hence seems more likely than asthma or cancer from exposure to wood-dust, mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos, or long-term backache from slouching at our desks.
Box: Space Shuttle landing on the Shard
I have used an alien invasion example for a long time – I think since a 2007 Doctor Who episode where a hospital is unexpectedly transported to the Moon. The hospital staff have no protocol for this particular emergency, but they do have emergency procedures to adapt.
In June 2017 a fire in a tower block in London resulted in the deaths of 73 people, including an unborn child. This is not the place to attempt to explain what happened, but of relevance here was a statement by Dany Cotton, the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade at the time, during the Grenfell Tower inquiry. When asked why LFB had not prepared for the type of fire that occurred at Grenfell, Dany Cotton responded:
I wouldn’t develop a training package for a space shuttle to land on the Shard, we would respond to it and deal with it in the same manner we do. That is an incident of that scale, so I wouldn’t expect us to be developing training or response to something that simply shouldn’t happen.
References:
1.5 We need to consider the right people, and at every step
“Decide who could be harmed” was never a discrete step, after you have identified all the hazards. In practice you will consider “who could be harmed” when you are identifying the hazards. Or at least, you should be, which leads us to the third problem.
Some risk assessments suggest that the assessor is unable to distinguish between “the hazard” and the “person who could be harmed.” A well-known health and safety course uses an example of someone learning to drive to introduce the idea of risk assessment. The tutor’s manual gives the instruction “Explain to delegates that the cyclist is a hazard.”
Ask yourself:
Who will be harmed if the car hits the cyclist? And which is the thing doing the harm? What is the hazard?
If this high-profile course gets it wrong, is it any wonder that people producing risk assessments end up with the people who can be harmed in the hazard column? I’ve come across risk assessments with “pregnancy” or “pregnant worker”, “young person”, “disabled person” and even “customers” as the hazard. If a customer is to be considered as the hazard I’d want the risk assessment to spell out in what circumstances they could be the cause of harm (one of the examples I break down in Chapter 3.)
The primary legislation for health and safety in the UK explains which people should be considered in a risk assessment. With apologies for the non-gender neutral language of the law, the Health and Safety at Work etc Act (1974) requires that an employer should:
conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.
That is, by definition if your undertaking affects someone, you have a duty of care to not expose that person to health and safety risks (so far as is reasonably practicable – a concept we will analyse in Chapter 5).
In the case of Donaghue v Stevenson (1932), a drinks manufacturer (Stevenson) tried to claim it had no duty of care to Ms Donaghue when she was made ill by the ginger beer it had bottled, because her friend had paid for it. The House of Lords however held that the manufacturer did owe her a duty of care, with the generalised finding that if it is reasonably foreseeable that someone will be affected by your acts or omissions, you owe them a duty of care.
The extent of this duty of care has been tested in many areas of law, as well as health and safety. In Caparo Industries v Dickman (1990) Caparo decided to buy shares in a company on the basis of an audit report that accountants Dickman had prepared. The report was inaccurate about the company’s profits, causing Caparo to make a loss. However, the House of Lords determined that if anyone reading the report could claim for damages, this would open the floodgates to further claims.
The Caparo judgement was soon tested by those who considered themselves as victims of the Hillsborough disaster that resulted in nearly 100 deaths and over 750 injuries. The claimants were not at the ground, but they watched the events unfold on television, and claimed for the psychological harm they suffered. In Copoc, Alcock and others v. Wright (Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police) (1991) the appeal judges ruled that although it was foreseeable that those watching the match at home – knowing their loved ones were in the crowds – would suffer psychological distress, it would not be reasonable to extend the duty of care this far.
These two cases do not mean that duty of care is limited to those who suffer physical harm. In Walker v Northumberland County Council (1994) the judge ruled that an employer’s duty of care includes providing a safe system of work, and that includes work that does not cause undue stress. A social services officer took sickness absence for a stress-related illness. His employer agreed to reduce his workload when he returned, but as he tried to catch up on the backlog of work left for him, his stress increased. He was forced to retire early. The first period of illness made it reasonably foreseeable that he would suffer illness again, even if other employees could cope with the same workload.
Many of the situations where people are not considered in risk assessments are more straightforward. I reviewed the risk assessments that a facilities company was providing to all its clients (overly generic risk assessments). The risk assessments of this facilities company had been accepted by multiple clients for years. The risk assessment for their staff using a vacuum cleaner on the stairs highlighted the electrical hazard of the machine, and a work at height hazard for the cleaning staff. Client staff had not been considered as those who could be harmed, and hence the risk assessment didn’t include the trip hazard to the client staff created by the cable trailing up or down the stairs from the nearest socket.
1.6 How can it be better?
For something to be a hazard, it must be possible for someone to be harmed. So you need to evaluate the risk to a selection of representative people. If you dismiss a hazard as trivial because it has little impact on most people, but you haven’t considered its impact on vulnerable people, you have not identified hazards.
The trivial risk of a hot drink at home might become significant in a school corridor. Similarly, an otherwise trivial manual handling task could be harmful to someone with a pre-existing injury. If you don’t assess the risk for each type of person, you can’t decide if there is a non-trivial hazard.
But if “Identify the hazard” is not a discrete step, how can we get started?
This ‘I spy’ approach recommended by the HSE will help you to identify obvious hazards, such as large, physical objects, or substances in containers with warning symbols. However, I spy overemphasises some hazards, and misses others, such as those created by routine work, maintenance or emergency procedures. The approaches in the next three chapters will help you uncover hidden (but foreseeable) hazards so you can build a more effective system to control risk:
Chapter 2: Better identification through better understanding of what you are assessing
Chapter 3: Using simple flowcharts to identify hazards – they may not be what you think they are
Chapter 4: How to meet your duty of care, and make sure you don’t leave anyone out of your risk assessments
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Appendix 1: Case studies by year
Appendix 2: Answers to questons posed in each chapter
Appendix 3: Lost HSE references