Competent Person Health and Safety Law in Ireland and the UK

Competent person health and safety duties apply to every employer in Ireland and Great Britain, whatever the size of the business. In Ireland the duty sits in section 18 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. In Great Britain it sits in regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. Both laws say the same thing in plain terms: you must appoint someone with the right competence to help you protect your people.

Most employers have heard the phrase. Far fewer can name their competent person, or show on paper why that person qualifies. When we audit a client’s safety file, the appointment is among the first records we ask for, because an inspector from the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) or the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will ask for it too.

We advise contractors and energy operators across Ireland and the UK as their external competent person, and our chartered team is led by Gavin Coyle, CMIOSH. This guide sets out what the 2 laws require, who can fill the role, how many people you need, how to judge competence, and how the general competent person differs from the task-specific roles in scaffolding, lifting and electrical work.

What Is a Competent Person in Health and Safety?

A competent person is someone you appoint to help you meet your health and safety duties. They advise on hazards, help you put controls in place and check that those controls work. The appointment supports you, and our guide to employer accountability explains why the legal duty itself stays with you, whoever you appoint.

Each jurisdiction defines competence in its own words:

• Ireland: section 2(2) of the 2005 Act deems a person competent where they possess “sufficient training, experience and knowledge appropriate to the nature of the work to be undertaken”, having regard to the task and the size or hazards of the undertaking.
• Great Britain: regulation 7(5) treats a person as competent where they have “sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities” to properly assist with the measures you need to take.

The wording matters. The Irish test joins training, experience and knowledge with “and”, so the person needs all 3 in proportion to the work. The GB test reads “experience or knowledge”, which leaves more room for someone whose know-how comes from years on the job. HSE puts it simply: a competent person has the skills, knowledge and experience to recognise the hazards in your business and help you put sensible controls in place.

What the Law Requires: Section 18 and Regulation 7

The 2 laws grew from the same European framework directive, so the duties line up closely. The details differ in ways that matter on a cross-border project.

Ireland: section 18 of the 2005 Act

Section 18 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 requires every employer to:

• Appoint 1 or more competent persons to perform the functions you specify for protecting employees and preventing risks (section 18(1)).
• Give an employee appointed to the role adequate time to do it, with no loss of pay (section 18(2)).
• Make sure the number of people, their time and their resources are adequate for the size of the workplace and the risks (section 18(3)).
• Arrange co-operation between the competent person and any safety representative (section 18(3)(b)).
• Appoint a competent employee in preference to an outsider, unless that employee’s knowledge and experience is not adequate for the functions (section 18(4)).
• Give an external competent person the information they need on risks, protective measures, evacuation arrangements and temporary staff (section 18(5)).

The Health and Safety Authority summarises the same duties in its guide to the 2005 Act, alongside the risk assessment and safety statement duties in sections 19 and 20.

Great Britain: regulation 7 of the 1999 Regulations

In England, Scotland and Wales, regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires every employer to appoint 1 or more competent persons to assist with the measures needed to comply with health and safety law. The regulation also requires adequate co-operation between appointees, enough people, time and means for the size of the business and its risks, and information for any appointee who is not an employee.

Regulation 7(8) sets the same in-house preference as Ireland: where you have a competent person on the payroll, you appoint them ahead of an outsider. Regulations 7(6) and 7(7) exempt a self-employed employer working alone, or a partnership, where the employer or 1 of the partners has the competence to do the work personally. Northern Ireland has its own equivalent regulations.

Who Can Be Your Competent Person?

HSE guidance lists 3 options, which you can use alone or in combination: yourself, 1 or more of your workers, or someone from outside your business. Irish law allows the same mix. Both laws point you inward first.

Yourself as the owner

In a low-risk workplace, the owner often knows the hazards better than anyone. The HSE guidance says managing health and safety usually is not complicated and many employers can do it themselves with help from their workers. For small businesses with office or light workshop risks, that is a sensible starting point. In Ireland, section 18 has no express self-appointment carve-out, so we advise owners to write the appointment and the basis for their competence into the safety statement.

An employee

Both laws prefer a competent employee over an outsider. An in-house appointee knows the workplace, is there every day and builds capability that stays in the business. The catch is time. Section 18(2) entitles an Irish appointee to adequate time with no loss of pay, and a supervisor asked to “do safety” around a full production role rarely gets it.

An external consultant

Bring in an external adviser where the work is large, complex or high risk, or where nobody in-house has the competence yet. Ireland expressly lifts the in-house preference when the employee’s knowledge and experience is not adequate for the functions. You can also combine the 2, with an employee handling daily checks and an external adviser covering audits, investigations and high-risk planning. For questions between visits, our legal advice line gives clients phone and email access to a chartered adviser.

How Many Competent Persons Do You Need?

Neither law sets a fixed number. Both require the number of people, their time and their resources to be adequate for the size of the workplace, the risks and the way those risks are spread across your sites. A single office needs less than a contractor running crews on 10 locations at once.

Irish construction adds a hard threshold. Regulation 26 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Construction) Regulations 2013 requires every contractor who normally has more than 20 persons under direct control on a construction site at a given time, or 30 persons engaged in construction work, to appoint 1 or more competent persons in writing as safety officers. The regulation says the appointment must take section 18 into account, and 1 safety officer can cover a group of sites.

Spread matters as much as headcount. In 2021, our health and safety advisor for a utility client covered 63 substations across Ireland. In 6 months the role identified and closed 5 critical gaps, including a lift plan deficiency under General Application Regulation 42 and a missing emergency plan for MEWP operations. A single competent person can cover a distributed estate, but only with the time, authority and means the law requires.

Where the workload adds up to a full-time site role, our HSE temporary recruitment team places degree-qualified safety officers within 48 hours.

What Does a Competent Person Actually Do?

Section 18 lets the employer specify the functions, so the job description is yours to set. In practice, a competent person for health and safety typically:

• Identifies hazards and leads or reviews the risk assessments.
• Drafts or reviews the safety statement in Ireland, or the health and safety policy in Great Britain.
• Builds and maintains the safety management system that ties procedures, training and monitoring together.
• Inspects sites and equipment, and follows up on actions.
• Investigates accidents and near misses, and reports them where the law requires.
• Identifies training needs and checks that inductions and refreshers happen.
• Tracks legal changes and tells management what they mean for the business.
• Works with safety representatives and the safety committee.

Write the agreed functions down. An inspector will ask what the competent person was appointed to do, and “general safety” does not answer the question.

How to Judge Whether Someone Is Competent

Competent person health and safety appointments are proportionate. The same person can be fully competent for a 12-person office and out of their depth on a high-voltage substation. Judge it against the work in front of them.

Qualifications

HSE guidance says formal qualifications are not usually essential and formal training is not a legal requirement, although both help. Irish law takes account of the National Framework of Qualifications when assessing competence. In practice, clients and principal contractors look for recognised markers:

• A NEBOSH General Certificate or Construction Certificate for supervisory and operational roles.
• A NEBOSH National Diploma or a degree in occupational safety and health for adviser-level roles.
• An IOSH grade, from TechIOSH and CertIOSH up to Chartered Member (CMIOSH), which requires ongoing professional development.

Experience in your industry

Training without industry exposure is the most common gap we find. A competent adviser for wind farm construction knows lifting plans and turbine access. A competent adviser for a power station outage knows permits to work and isolations. Ask for examples from sites like yours. Brian Linton, Projects Director at Energia, described our work this way: “Gavin Coyle and the team have given us valuable safety insight over the years, working mainly in our windfarms but also on conventional power stations.”

Questions to ask before you appoint

• What training and qualifications do you hold, and are they current?
• Which sites and hazards like ours have you managed?
• How much time can you give the role each week?
• Who do you escalate to when something is beyond your competence?

The last question is the most revealing. A competent person knows the limits of their own competence and says so.

General and Task-Specific Competent Persons

Ask for an example of a competent person and the answer depends on which law you are reading, because “competent person” appears in 2 senses.

The first is the general appointment under section 18 or regulation 7. That person helps you manage health and safety across the business.

The second is the task-specific competent person named in equipment and activity regulations. Examples include:

• Scaffold and work at height inspections: the Work at Height Regulations 2005 in Great Britain, and Part 4 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007 in Ireland, require inspections by a competent person.
• Lifting equipment: the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER) in Great Britain require thorough examination by a competent person, and the Irish General Application Regulations set equivalent duties.
• Electrical work: the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 in Great Britain require people working on electrical systems to be competent to prevent danger.
• Confined spaces: the Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 in Great Britain and the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Confined Spaces) Regulations 2001 in Ireland require competent planning and supervision.

Your general competent person may hold some of these competences, but rarely all of them. A chartered adviser can manage your safety system without being the right person to thoroughly examine a crane. Check each appointment against its own task.

Is a Competent Person the Same as a Qualified Person?

No. A qualification is evidence of training. Competence is the combination of training, experience and knowledge applied to the specific work. A newly qualified diploma holder may lack the site experience a high-risk job needs, while a supervisor with 20 years on scaffolds may be fully competent to inspect them without a degree.

Treat qualifications as 1 part of the test. Record what the person holds, what they have done and what the role requires, and you will have the evidence an inspector expects to see.

Appointing Your Competent Person With Confidence

The law asks 3 things of you. Appoint a competent person with training, experience and knowledge that match your risks. Prefer someone from your own workforce where they have that competence. Give them the time, information and means to do the job. Then write it all down, because your competent person health and safety record is what an inspector, a client or a principal contractor will check.

The best employers treat that legal minimum as a floor. Liam Mannion, Health and Safety Manager at ESBI, part of the ESB group, put it plainly: “We want to go far further [than the regulations]. Coyle Group thinks the same way.” If you want a chartered view of your current appointment, or an external competent person to back up your team, book a compliance consultation and we will review it against the law for your site.