Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

7.10 
Review and audit
7.10.1 Audits – purpose
The fi nal steps in the health and safety management 
control cycle are auditing and performance review. 
Organizations need to be able to reinforce, maintain and 
develop the ability to reduce risks. The ‘feedback loop’ 
produced by this fi nal stage in the process enables them 
to do this and to ensure continuing effectiveness of the 
health and safety management system.
Audit is a business discipline which is frequently 
used, for example, in fi nance, environmental matters and 
quality. It can equally well be applied to health and safety.
The term is often used to mean inspection or other 
monitoring activity. Here, the following defi nition is used, 
which follows HSG 65:
The structured process of collecting inde-
pendent information on the effi ciency, effect-
iveness and reliability of the total health and 
safety management system and drawing up 
plans for corrective action.
Over time, it is inevitable that control systems will decay 
and may even become obsolete as things change. 
Auditing is a way of supporting monitoring by providing 
managers with information. It will show how effectively 
plans and the components of health and safety manage-
ment systems are being implemented. In addition, it will 
provide a check on the adequacy and effectiveness of 
the management arrangements and risk control systems 
(RCSs).
Auditing is critical to a health and safety manage-
ment system, but it is not a substitute for other essential 
parts of the system. Companies need systems in place 
to manage cash fl ow and pay the bills – this cannot be 
managed through an annual audit. In the same way, 
health and safety needs to be managed on a day-to-day 
basis and for this organizations need to have systems in 
place. A periodic audit will not achieve this.
The aims of auditing should be to establish that 
the three major components of a safety management 
system are in place and operating effectively. It should 
show that: 
➤
appropriate management arrangements are in 
place 

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