Why we don't say "compliant"

Plenty of template sellers will tell you their documents are legally compliant, or that they guarantee you will pass your CHAS or SafeContractor assessment. We won't, and it is worth explaining why.

No document template can make you compliant. The Health and Safety Executive says this about its own published templates: "Do not just copy an example and put your company name to it as that would not satisfy the law and would not protect your employees."

Compliance is created by a competent person in your business assessing the risk on your site and completing the document properly. The form confirms that work was done. It is not a substitute for it. HSE puts it plainly in its guidance on permit systems: the issue of a permit does not, by itself, make a job safe.

Assessment bodies know this too. SSIP assessors want risk assessments written for a specific project within the last twelve months. A generic template with your logo on it will not pass, whoever sold it to you.

So what are you actually buying?

A properly structured starting point, written by a main contractor, that prompts you for everything the law and HSE guidance expect the document to capture — with the regulation behind each section cited so you can verify it yourself. Twenty minutes of adaptation instead of a blank page and a weekend.

If that sounds like a smaller promise than the one down the road, it is. It is also the only one anyone can honestly make.