By the gate of any managed site there is a wall of paper. Some of it is required by law in terms; most of it is how a site meets a duty to tell people something. Here is which is which.
Required in terms
The HSE health and safety law poster. The Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations 1989 require every employer to display HSE's approved poster where their employees can read it, or give each of them the approved leaflet: the poster is bought from HSE, the leaflet is the free download. Both are HSE's own copyright documents and no template range should reproduce them. Each subcontractor owes this to their own people; one poster in the principal contractor's cabin does not discharge it for them.
The F10. Where a project is notifiable, regulation 6(3) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 requires the notice to be clearly displayed in the site office where any worker can read it, and kept up to date.
The employers' liability certificate. The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 makes the insurance compulsory; regulation 5 of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Regulations 1998 requires the certificate to be displayed where employees can read it, or made available electronically.
The health and safety policy statement. Section 2(3) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974: an employer with five or more employees has a written policy and brings it, and any revision, to the notice of employees.
Fire and emergency arrangements. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to construction sites, and article 15 requires procedures for serious and imminent danger that the people on the premises have been told. CDM 2015 regulation 30 requires emergency procedures and regulation 32 a means of raising the alarm. The fire action notice at every fire point is how a site shows both.
First-aid arrangements. Regulation 4 of the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 requires an employer to tell employees the arrangements, including where the equipment and the first-aiders are. The notice in the welfare is the usual means.
Hearing protection zones. Regulation 7(3) of the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 requires a zone to be demarcated with the prescribed ear-protection sign. A notice beside the sign can say what the sign cannot — the activity, the times, where the protection is issued — but cannot stand in for it.
Signs are not notices
The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 require a safety sign, of the prescribed shape and colour, wherever a risk remains after other controls. A printed notice, however large the type, is not that sign: the site rules do not replace the mandatory hard-hat sign, and the exclusion zone notice does not replace the warning sign on the barrier. Every notice in this range says so in its footer.
The site's own notices
Everything else on the wall — the site rules display edition, the minimum PPE, the traffic rules, the delivery instructions, the welfare, the induction notice, the permits board, the hours for the neighbours — is the site stating its own arrangements. None is a statutory form; all of them are CDM 2015 regulation 13 seen from the pavement. The test for each is whether it is true today. A permits board that does not match the register, or a fire notice naming a marshal who left last month, teaches people that the notices are decoration.
What a template does not do
A notice template gives a site the wording, the large type and the fields for the names, the numbers and the place. It does not know this site's assembly point, and it does not take itself down when the compound moves. The competent person running the site fills it in, signs it and keeps it true, and no document makes anyone compliant. Why we will never call a document "compliant".
Documents for this work
- The site notices bundle — all fourteen notices and boards
- Statutory Notices Display Checklist — the walk round the walls
- Site Rules — Display Edition — in the CDM 2015 bundle, not this one
- Fire Action Notice
- Permits in Force Board
- The site forms bundle — the emergency board, the induction register and the first-aid needs assessment the notices are filled in from