Complaints about health and safety at work

The law requires businesses to take reasonable steps to make sure that their staff are not exposed to risks to their health and safety.

If you are concerned about health and safety at work

If you consider that your employer or someone else's work activity is putting your safety at risk or damaging your health, then you:

• Should raise your concerns with that employer or person and try to resolve the issue, and/or
• Contact your work/safety representative

If there is no improvement and your safety or health continues to be at risk, you can raise it with the relevant enforcing authority.

We are not responsible for enforcing health and safety in all workplaces. To check who is responsible, see the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) information on who is the correct enforcing authority.

You can report  a problem to the HSE in a number of ways:

• Report your complaint to the correct enforcing authority
• Report your complaint directly to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) using the HSE online complaint form 
• Phone the HSE's complaints and advisory team on 0300 0031647 during office hours

If you are a member of the public and you think a person's health and safety is being put at risk, you can contact their employer directly to raise your concern with them.

If your complaint relates to a workplace in Aldershot or Farnborough, please contact us using the contact details below.

Types of health and safety complaints we can deal with

We can only take action following a complaint if:

• It relates to a work activity
• We are the correct enforcing authority for the work
• The issue complained about has caused or has potential to cause significant harm
• The issue being complained about relates to the denial of basic employee welfare facilities
• It appears to involve a significant breach of law, for which we are the enforcing authority

What we do about health and safety complaints

We may ask the employer to investigate your complaint or we may look into it ourselves.

If we visit the premises and judge that relevant health and safety legislation is followed, we cannot legally ask for any improvements at the premises. We may be able to make suggestions for improvement, but the law does not require these.

Feedback on your complaint

If you want feedback, we will contact you and let you know what we have done and explain our decision.

Anonymous health and safety complaints

We cannot investigate your complaint if you have made it anonymously or you have withheld your contact details.  This is because:

• We won't be able to substantiate or discuss the information with you
• We cannot be sure that it is not a malicious complaint

Compensation

We cannot help you get compensation or resolve problems of civil law.

The Citizens Advice can provide further information about your legal rights.