Health & safety governors can see, and the site team can actually use.
Independent support for schools and academy trusts across Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. A named competent person under Regulation 7, a written pack for the people doing the work, and a one-page summary your business manager can put in front of the board without rewriting it first.
Three steps, and your board knows where it stands.
No onboarding and no sales process. For most schools it is about a fortnight from the first call to a finished written pack, and the check at the start costs nothing whichever way it goes.
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1
A free school compliance check
Twenty-five minutes, phone or video, at a time that works round the school day. You tell me what you have and what you are unsure about: an audit coming, a new site manager, a governor who has started asking questions, or a set of risk assessments nobody has opened since the last head left. I will tell you what the law asks of a school your size, what looks sound, and what I would deal with first. You get that in writing afterwards, on one page. If the honest answer is that you are in decent shape, that is the answer you will get.
Same or next working day -
2
A visit, scheduled around the school
I walk the site with whoever holds the keys, which is usually the person who knows where the real problems are. Grounds, plant rooms, kitchens, DT and science, the areas contractors get into and the ones they should not. Anything serious, you hear about before I leave. Nothing important waits for the report.
Term time, INSET, or the first week of a holiday -
3
Your written pack, and something for the board
Your general risk assessment and your policy, written so the site team can follow them, and a prioritised list of jobs in the order they need doing. Then a separate one-page summary written for governors or trustees: what is in hand, what is not, and what the board is being asked to note. Two audiences, two documents. Most providers give you one and leave you to rewrite it.
Within a week of the visit
Fixed prices, published.
Most providers, including the traded-services packages, make you request a pack to find out. Here is what things cost, so you can work out whether we are worth a phone call before you make one.
Whole-school audit and written pack
A site visit, the written pack, the prioritised action list and the one-page summary for governors. This is where most schools start.
Retained competent person
Your named person under Regulation 7, a number to ring in term time, your statutory dates held in my diary, and a one-page report for the board each term.
Multi-school audit programme
The same audit across a trust, scheduled together and reported together, so the board sees one picture rather than eleven separate documents.
Every price is confirmed in writing before I start. We are not VAT registered, so the number above is the number you pay. The free compliance check costs nothing whichever way it goes.
Your named competent person
Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 says every employer must appoint at least one competent person to help them meet their duties. In a maintained school the employer is usually the local authority or the governing body. In an academy it is the trust. Either way somebody has to be named, and plenty of schools find the gap when a form asks for the name.
On a retainer, the name is mine. It goes in your policy, the phone gets answered in term time, and your arrangements get looked at more than once a year.
What your board is actually accountable for.
Health and safety sits with the employer, and it is not something that can be delegated away by writing a name on a policy. What can be delegated is the work. What stays with the board is knowing whether the work is being done. Four questions a governing body should be able to answer.
Who is our competent person, and what are they qualified in?
A name, and what that name is competent to advise on. "The local authority package" is a contract, not a person.
What is on our statutory calendar, and what has slipped?
Fire alarm and emergency lighting, LOLER on the hoists and stage equipment, fixed wiring, gas, water hygiene, asbestos re-inspection. The board does not need the detail. It needs to know a list exists and that somebody checks it.
What have we had reported, and what changed as a result?
Accidents, near misses, RIDDOR reports. A falling number is not automatically good news. It sometimes means people have stopped reporting.
When did somebody from outside last look?
HSE's own framework is Plan, Do, Check, Act. Schools are usually sound on Plan and Do and stall at Check, because checking your own arrangements means marking your own homework.
Most boards get one report a year, and it is not assurance
The usual arrangement is an annual health and safety report, written by the person responsible for health and safety, saying that health and safety is in hand. That is a self-assessment with no second reader. On a retainer, governors get one page a term instead: the calendar and what has slipped, what has been reported and what changed, open actions with dates and owners, and anything the board is being asked to decide.
Everything a school needs, and nothing it does not.
Take one piece of this or all of it. Most schools begin with the audit and then work through whatever it turns up.
Health & safety audit of your site
An independent walk round the whole site, against what the law asks of a school rather than a generic office checklist. Premises and grounds, contractor control, DT and science, kitchens and catering, plant rooms and roof access, lone working by site staff early and late.
Your named competent person
The name that goes in your policy and on the form that asks for it. Advice in term time, your statutory dates held and chased, and somebody to ring when a governor asks a question nobody in the building can answer.
Risk assessments schools actually need
Educational visits. Science and DT. Premises, grounds and play equipment. Contractors working on site while children are in the building. Lone working by caretakers and cleaners. Manual handling in catering and site teams. Written so the people named in them will read them.
Governor and trustee briefings
A short session for a governing body, a trust board or a premises committee. What the board is accountable for, what it should be asking for each term, and how to tell an assurance report that means something from one that does not.
Inspection and audit readiness
A rehearsal before it counts. Local authority monitoring visits, trust internal audit, insurer surveys, an HSE visit after a reportable incident. I go round the way the visitor will, and tell you what they will ask for while there is still time to find it.
Training and INSET
Sessions built round a school day, not a conference room. Risk assessment for the people who write them, legal duties for senior leaders, practical safety for site and premises teams. Half a day or a twilight slot.
- Primary schools
- Secondary schools
- Academies
- Multi-academy trusts
- Sixth forms & colleges
- Special schools
- Federations
Martyn's Law: what your board should minute now, and what it should not buy
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 3 April 2025. It is not yet in force. The government has confirmed an implementation period of at least 24 months, and commencement is currently expected in 2027. Statutory guidance and the notification arrangements are still being put in place.
When it does commence, every early years, primary, secondary and further education setting falls into the standard tier, whatever its capacity, provided 200 or more people are reasonably expected on site at once. Standard tier means procedures and awareness, not physical security works. The responsible person is the governing body or proprietor.
You do not need to spend money on this yet, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling. Government guidance for schools is published and is written to be followed without consultancy support. What a board can reasonably do now is minute that it has read the guidance, identified who the responsible person is, and agreed when it will revisit. If you want a second reader on that, ask. If you do not, use the guidance.
The things schools ask on the first call.
We already buy the local authority health & safety service. Why would we add this?
Often you should not, and if the package is being used properly I will say so on the call. What those packages are good at is documents, helplines and training credits. What they are usually thin on is somebody walking your site and looking at how the job is actually done, because the pricing does not support many visits per school.
Two questions worth asking your provider: how many site visits are included this year, and who is named as your competent person. If the answers are "one" and "the service", there is a gap. If they are "three" and a person's name, there probably is not.
We are converting to an academy, or joining a trust.
Conversion usually ends the local authority service agreement, and the arrangements that came with it. It is worth working out before conversion day who holds your competent person duty, your statutory calendar and your policy from the first day of the new arrangement, rather than finding the gap in the first term. A short call now costs nothing and saves a scramble.
Who is our competent person at the moment?
If you cannot answer that in one name, that is the finding. It is the most common gap I see in schools, and it takes about a minute on a call to establish.
When can you visit? We cannot lose a member of staff for a morning.
Term time works, and so does INSET or the first week of a holiday. The walk round takes two to three hours with somebody who knows the site. The rest is my problem, not yours. Tell me the date you are working towards and I will work backwards from it.
Do you do fire risk assessments, asbestos surveys or legionella?
No. Those belong to specialists and we will not pretend otherwise. What we will do is tell you what to look for in whoever you appoint, and make sure they appear on your compliance calendar so nothing lapses in the gap between suppliers.
What does the free compliance check actually cover?
Twenty-five minutes on who your competent person is and whether that holds up, your policy and whether it describes your school or somebody else's, what risk assessments exist and when they were last touched, the statutory compliance calendar and what has slipped, your accident and incident arrangements, contractor control during term time, and what governors currently receive.
It tells you what is missing and what to deal with first. It does not produce the documents, and it is not a site visit. If you want the assessments written or the site walked, that is the audit, and it is priced above.
Do you have to be on site with children present?
No. Plenty of the walk round is plant rooms, grounds, kitchens and store cupboards, and much of it is better done when the building is quiet. Where I do need to see how a space is used in practice, a DT workshop or a science lab mid-lesson, that is arranged with you and with the member of staff whose room it is.
Start with the free check.
Twenty-five minutes, no cost and nothing owed at the end of it. You get a written one-page summary afterwards whether or not you go any further.