My take:

Your policy is what you do and your strategy is how you are going to change what you do.

You probably have a written policy but not a written strategy.

You can call the parts of your Health and Safety management system what you like- Fred and Ginger if you like (unless you are working to a formal standard like ISO 45001, which means you have to use the official terminology)

Most people have a Health and Safety Policy Statement, which is a sort mission statement type thing which confirms that:

• The organisation takes H&S seriously and will assign resources to it such as people, money time etc
• That they will comply with any legal requirements ie Health and Safety at Work Act etc
• That they will get everybody onside from most senior manager down to the lowliest operative ( do we have tea boys anymore?)
• That anybody that does not support H&S gets stamped on

A Policy Statement is typically 1 page long

An H&S Policy is much longer and describes what you DO (or intend to DO) now. In PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT it tells everybody how to move from PLAN to DO. In fact there might be several policies covering specific arras areas such as a COSHH policy, a PUWER policy and a stress Policy etc.

The organisation and arrangements document might exist as separate document that comes under the policy describing what everybody’s role should be in relation to H&S.

Local procedures might be established, so for example there might be a DSE policy which says: Every will have  a DSE assessment , when they get a new work station, when there is change in their circumstances,  eg they are pregnant, when there is  a change in the equipment provided or how the work is organised etc.  The procedure will describe how a DSE is carried out.

None of this is written in stone and it depends on how you want do this.

An H&S Strategy is a much more long term thing providing targets to aim for. If we are using the PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT paradigm the strategy fits between ACT (in reality review) and PLAN and it establishes how to create continuous improvement for each cycle. In most places one cycle lasts about a year so a strategy will last for several years (5 years is popular length).

Edited by user 19 March 2018 12:30:06(UTC)  | Reason: spelling error as usual