Section 19 requires you to identify the hazards and assess the risks. Section 20 requires a written safety statement built on that assessment. This is a free walkthrough of doing both yourself.
Read this before you start.
Food Safe Ireland is a private training company. We are not a food authority, we are not part of the State, and nothing you do in a guide is approved or certified by anyone. The assessments and the safety statement are legal documents about your workplace. You write them, and you are responsible for them.
The guides are guidance, not advice, and they are unsupported. We cannot review your documents, complete an application for you, or advise on your particular premises. Everything you need to do it yourself is in the steps — but the doing is yours.
If you want that kind of help it belongs in a paid service rather than a free guide. Email [email protected] and we will tell you what is available.
Its first real test will be the worst possible moment to discover that. Both documents have to be about your workplace, and the assessment has to come before the statement.
Section 19 first: identify and assess. Section 20 second: a written statement based on that assessment. Doing it the other way round produces a document about nobody's workplace.
Customers, contractors, delivery drivers, cleaners working after hours. Young workers, new or expectant mothers, and anyone working alone need particular thought.
The statement must be brought to employees' attention. A document written in consultancy prose cannot be, whatever it contains.
Sources ·
HSA — Safety statement and risk assessment ·
HSA — Accident and dangerous occurrence reporting
General guidance, not legal advice, and not supported. Your own system, and the officer inspecting your premises, are what govern your business.
Every step closes with a tick-list of what you should actually have. Where the next move is outside the guide, it tells you and links you straight there.
Sections 19 and 20 in plain terms, and why hazard and risk are not the same word.
You finish the step holding:
Walk the workplace at a realistic time and ask the people who do the job.
You finish the step holding:
One rating scale, existing controls before new ones, and the hierarchy in the right order.
You finish the step holding:
What Section 20 expects in it, in language a new starter can actually follow.
You finish the step holding:
A record that feeds back into the assessment, and knowing what must be reported.
You finish the step holding:
Reviews when things change, and training for the controls that depend on it.
You finish the step holding:
You get the one you write. It has to describe your workplace — that part cannot be bought, and it is the part that is actually tested.
That is why most statements fail: nobody starts. The Risk Assessment Pack has nine assessments already written for a commercial kitchen, a 5×5 matrix, accident forms and a statement skeleton, so the work becomes editing and verifying rather than starting from nothing.
The thresholds and forms are the HSA's to state, and they change. The guide links you straight to their page rather than paraphrasing it, because a summary of a reporting threshold is exactly the kind of thing that goes stale and gets someone in trouble.
Not on a free guide — these are unsupported. Email [email protected] to ask what paid help exists.
The guide stands on its own. These are what people tend to need once they have worked through it — and they are how we make a living, which is why the guide can be free.
Five free guides, all step by step, all yours to work through at your own pace.
Free · 6 steps · work at your own pace.
Guidance only, and unsupported — the doing is yours.