Within my organisation there is a 1 page SHEQ policy statement - Safety, Health, Environmental & Quality.

I'm soon to take over as the Group SHEQ Manager and really think there should be more to each subject, i.e. maybe a page on each.

My question is, could I still keep the SHEQ Policy statement but also have an individual policy statement on each system with a lager detailed statement, which would sit within my SHEQ Manual?

As we have to display the SHEQ Policy statement, my initial thoughts are to replace and have instead;

Health and Safety Policy Statement

Quality Policy Statement

Environmental Policy Statement

Fire Policy Statement

Which would then give a more detailed statement. Is it common to have a SHEQ Policy instead of seperate statements? I just dont feel it says enough on its own?

Your views would be very much valued.

I've seen plenty of organisations that have 'subsidiary', policies, e.g. for smoking, drugs & alcohol. Often this arises when a new area of risk is being tackled with some link to OSH but also affecting other areas, particularly HR.

I've never seen a separate Fire Policy, I suggest fire is just one hazard within the H&S area, and pretty rarely that significant. I have seen plenty of integrated SHEQ Policies. I know what HASAWA says about H&S Policy statements but in my experience it is normal to have just a single page succinct Policy statement, personally signed and perhaps with a photo as a signal of top level commitment and then to have all sorts of other documents to detail the organisation and arrangements for implementing the high-level policy.

Hopefully you have some kind of documented Management System and usually that's the next level down below the policy. If you follow ISO standards, you might have integrated Certification, but usually the QMS, EMS and OSHMS are separate, though some organisations have an integrated business MS that covers them all.

Does the fact that there is a combined HSEQ Policy Statement dilute the actual implementation of each aspect and by seperating the Policy Statements, what difference do you expect?

Nothing wrong with an integrated approach. Each dealt with as an integral part of the line management function.