How many first aiders required

The best way to determine what the "adequate and appropriate equipment, facilities and personnel" might be is to conduct a risk assessment You need to complete a risk assessment for any risks that can be found in your workplace. Conducting a first-aid risk assessment will help you decide how many first-aiders are required.

If you are looking for a free online risk assessment tool, head over to My Risk Assessment. If you work in a shop, or an office, for example, you work in a relatively low-risk area. Small organisations will need to have at least one First Aid Appointed Person at all times. However, it is still good practice to have one first aider per 50 employees and at least one first aider on each floor. The rules for high-risk workplaces are more stringent.

Other examples of high risk workplaces include mines, railways, and health services. A first aider is someone who has undertaken the necessary training and holds a valid qualification as a certificate of competence.

EFAW is usually a one day course covering emergency first aid, someone who has done this course is an emergency first aider EFA. FAW is a higher level 3 day course with also covers first aid to specific injuries and illnesses, someone who has done this course is a first aider FA. What's a low-risk environment? Think along the lines of an office environment or a conference room. Somewhere people are not doing a lot of physical tasks and using only low-risk equipment, like computers, desks and chairs.

Let's consider an office. Although a low-risk environment, injuries and accidents can still happen in offices. There are no exact rules or requirements on the number of first aiders or appointed persons to be provided in an office environment. However there is a legal requirement to provide adequate first aid equipment, facilities and people, so your employees can get immediate help should an accident occur.

You therefore need to assess what your first aid needs are. Office work is a relatively low hazard environment and the risk of accident and injury is much lower when compared to a high-risk environment such as construction or manufacturing work. You need to take the nature of the work into account as well as the number of employees when assessing your first aid requirements. The HSE guidance gives a suggested number of first aiders required in a low-risk environment such as an office:.

Where your offices are spread out over a number of buildings or floors, you need to consider providing first aid requirements on each level or each building. What's a high-risk environment? Somewhere like a construction site, a warehouse or a manufacturing facility, where the nature of the work and the equipment used means there is a high likelihood that accidents will happen.

For our example, we will look at a construction site, but you can apply these rules to any high-risk environment. Like low-risk environments, there are no exact rules or requirements on the number of first aiders or appointed persons to be provided on a construction site.

However, like all workplaces, there is a legal requirement to provide adequate first aid equipment, facilities and people, so your team can get immediate help should an injury occur on site. Construction work is high hazard in its nature and the risk of accident and injury is much higher when compared to a low-risk environment such as office work. The HSE guidance gives a suggested number of first aiders required in a high-risk environment such as a construction site:.

If the nature of your work means your workforce is spread out over a number of sites, you need to consider each site individually for first aid requirements. What if you have more than one type of work environment. Taking our construction example further, what about your office based staff? Working in the construction industry, your health and safety focus will often be on your sites, where the most serious health and safety risks will be present.

There are some other considerations you should think about when deciding how many first aiders you need in your workplace. One of the most important considerations, in our opinion, is for workplaces who come under the guidance as needing only one first aider or appointed person. What if your first aider needs first aid? What if your first aider is off ill?

The guidance given is for the number of first aiders you need to provide first aid cover, NOT the number of first aiders you need in total. This is why we said earlier on in this article that you need to take the guidance and then at least double it in terms of the number of people you should have trained in first aid. People get ill, have days off, leave, and take holidays.

Think about it. You need to complete a First Aid Needs Assessment to identify the correct number for your workplace. This might mean you need to train multiple employees or even your whole team to provide guaranteed cover. This includes shift workers too you need to ensure that all shifts are covered adequately.

However, you are still responsible for meeting the first aid needs for these employees. You should choose the most appropriate type of training to the environment in which you operate. Or a specifically tailored course with added specialist content.

An appointed person is responsible for maintaining any first aid equipment and contacting the emergency services when they are required. Although most qualifications require refreshing every 3 years, we strongly recommend that staff attend first aid training annually, to help maintain their basic skills and keep them up to date with any changes in first aid procedures.

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Skip to content The Health and Safety First-Aid Regulations states that you must provide adequate and appropriate first aid coverage. As a starting point, we can group workplaces into general risk categories. How many first aiders do I need in a shop, office or library? How many first aiders do I need in a warehouse or light processing environment?