I have been a Local Authority enforcement officer for the last 20 years, I have recently started on the self employed route and I am being reasonably successful in getting work through local authroities and individual private companies. I am not sure what other businesses charge or what the going rate for professional health and safety consultancy/advice is? Is anyone aware of any surveys that might have been undertaken to find out what people are charging per hour or per day for local Authority or private work? I am not really after individuals telling me what they charge but if they want to please send an email to my inbox rather than posting fees on the discussion forum. Thank you

Thank you for your reply Ian, I had already used the calculation that you suggested but good to know thats how others work it out too although my experience so far is that the percentage of paid time is more like 50% due to time taken getting set up, creating websites, business set up etc. Funnily enough I know a plumber who showed me a survey undertaken by the plumbers merchants 'Williams' this was very helpful for other plumbers to guage where they are on the scale of cheap and expensive which is what I am trying to achieve. Maybe this a survey that I could undertake if no one else has done it before. Members thoughts on this are encouraged. Thank you for your input, hopefully there will be more to come.

A bit off topic, but my "tame plumber" who we are careful to treat as a minor god, tells me he often applies a 20% "a hole" tax to some folk's bills.

Thats a very reasonable rate. Your rate also depends on which industry you work in and location For oil & gas, as a safety engineer - rates are at least 2 or 3 times that.... The general industrial/construction IOSH/NEBOSH type of safety is swamped with consultants - hence relatively much lower rates paid.

Thank you to everyone for your responses and your openness, including the private responses. Before using the forum I looked at lots of contractors websites and of course no one was quoting their hourly or daily rates. From a businesses point of view it can't be easy choosing a consultant without knowing their rates. The consultants register http://www.oshcr.org/ doesn't help in determining what consultants charge and this is what I would suggest businesses use when I am wearing my enforcement hat. I have found that when setting up in business so little of your time is productive in terms of income as there are so many other things to do re tax, admin, bookkeeping, meetings, quotations etc. hence your hourly rate needs to reflect this time to be successful. This is what I was battling with because the rate I needed to earn seemed so high. After reading the document http://www.iosh.co.uk/en...sources/Salary%20surveys that 'SimpleSafety' suggested I have doubled my hourly rate due to recognition of my qualifications and experience and this has helped me to see my 'worth' . I hope this gets the subject out in the open a bit because professionals should have confidence in their knowledge and abilities and more importantly their worth. Ians comment reinforces this re £35.00 hr being very reasonable.

Thanks Ian, I agree that being self employed doesn't mean that you charge less but you can't use advertised salaries to determine an hourly or daily self employed rate. Paid employment is completely different because you get paid for a set no. of hours per week plus your annual leave and bank holidays etc. I was trying to determine how to calculate hourly or daily rates to include the periods that you are not out there earning money and find out what the scale /range looks like. It seems that oil and gas is the industry to be in but if not it is important to identify your market. This has also been very time consuming.

I don't enitirely agree about not using salaried jobs being a guide to how much to charge, as a self employed consultant. The prvious 1880hrs per year comes from working 47 weeks per yr and 40hrs per week. So allowance for holidays and Bank Holidays is already factored into your sums. You can't vary the hours per year by very much, unless you are going to work constant 12hr days etc. So in effect, the only variable you have to your turnover (and hence salary) is the hourly rate you charge. Quite obviously you need to keep admin/tax/sales hours down to a minimum as they reduce your earned hours. Hence why consultancy companies expect to see Uilisation Factors of at least 80%+ So if you want to earn £50k but your UF is only 50% (say 900hrs/yr), then quite obviously your hr/rate needs to be higher, to compensate for the non productive weeks etc. For £50k over 900hrs = £55.55 per/hr for example (overheads not allowed for!!) Sometimes for example, its worth turning down work which may be at a distant location or excessive hotel nights drive up your costs and make the job unprofitable (unless you can see another major item of work with the potential client - so treat the 1st job as a 'loss leader' to get a foot in the door) For me freelance contracting and consultancy works best. No hours spent doing sales/generating proposals for no pay (recruitment agencies find me the work), my admin/tax etc takes me about 20minutes per week. Virtually paid for 100% of my hours worked - max UF = best salary. There are 2 basic models to consultancy - 'jobbing consultancy- lots of relatively small jobs, constantly seeking new clients, quoting for work etc - usually relatively low pay rate per each job. But overall leads to an acceptable salary. 'High end consulting' usually in high hazard industries i.e. petro-chemical/oil & gas. Less numbers of individual jobs but much higher paid. Overall better off. Google Technical Safety Engineer - Oil industry for typical contract rates etc.

Also forgot, your rate needs to reflect business taxes as well, if you work via your own Ltd Company. The figures I have produced are simply to determine your salary.

All good if you are happy with that arrangement. How many hours per month, approx is that? Much more than 8-10hrs per month, I would say would be very cheap, considering the tax & overheads of say 20-25%. Quite frankly no wonder h&s jobs are still advertised at 25-30k.

confined, £300 a month for all that work?? I do something similar for a road construction company (but not their FE and PAT testing). My £35 an hour, 1 day a week, works out at about £980 a month for them. Probably 600 miles a month fuel expense, about £80, and a few hours at home doing reports no extra charge.

As I said I am happy with the arrangement. I only work 3 to 4 hours at the most a month for that, and there is limited mileage as it's a local company . it fits around my life comfortable ,and it pays for our holiday every year....and it's not that difficult oh and he is a mate. I have a full time job that pays the going rate for a chartered practitioner, so I'm comfortable with the arrangement .

confined, £300 for 4 hours work... that's a rip off! :o)) As Ian says that's fair enough. For my road gangs' £980 a month I 'work' on sites just about 24 hours, 6 hours travelling, and add 6 hours on reports at home, I suppose I'm not charging for all the home work but I have charged when I've written RAMS for them. I mentioned that I had a bit of a pension, well that takes care of my untaxed personal allowance so all my business income is taxed 28% (with NI). Haven't reached the higher tax band for some years. My expenses amount to about £2000 a year. What you charge all comes down to what you can afford, and if you want to attract local customers. My low rates certainly clinched it with my main clients and no regrets there as it's a regular income for years.

Hang on confined, I did put a smiley :o)) after my comment! If you know internet-forum-netiquette you'd know that the smiley is to indicate a tongue-in-cheek comment - used to imply that the comment is humorously or not seriously intended, and it should not be taken at face value - but I apologise that offence was taken :o(

confined, that's good, thanks!

And £35 per hour is a reasonable rate if it guarantees 21 hours every week? :o)

I think there are numerous reasons why h&s people charge such varying rates. 1. The consultancy market is simply swamped with consultants - from 1-man self employed consultants, up to small to large size consultancies (5-100 consultants) 2. Qualifications required to trade as a consultant - are minimal/not required by law etc. 3. Relatively cheap set up costs, being a largely knowledge based job. 4. Some industries are relatively low paid, certainly at the 'tools' end e.g. construction 5. The range of skills/responsibilities required cover a vey wide range - from, if you like level 1 of checking fire extinguishers etc up to level 5 senior manager giving corporate information/guidance. For level 5 most senior level managers could probably do the job, having stategic management systems/PR skills being probably more important than technical skills. Personally I prefer the safety engineering side of a career in h&s, where additional engineering/science qualifications are required. This permits access into the high hazard sector- nuclear, oil/gas/petro-chemical sectors, which means high rates are obtainable. I do not work or trade in the mass market small workshop/factory client level as the rates payable are poor by comparison, although I could, if work ever dries up in my sector of interest.

I've always been of the understanding that to work out consultancy fees you take the salary you would get as a full time employee and times it by 3. One third is for the actual work you do, one third is for down time and time spent getting work and the final third is for admin, chasing payments, getting books in order, etc. I'm still relatively new to this, but I'm finding so far that this is pretty much about right. There is some flexibility in this, for example I've got a client who is really straight forward admin wise and always pays on time without fail - so I charge them less. I've also got a new client who I've offered a discount to if they pay within 30 days (I think I'm probably going to start doing this going forward. I charge £63 / hour, but this cover H&S, food safety and sometimes a bit of licensing too and includes hosting of anything I produce - reports, documents, etc. online for a set period (anything longer I charge extra for). At first I was a bit worried that I was too expensive as I wasn't really getting much work in, but now my name has got out there work is starting to roll in thick and fast, which is nice!! Interestingly I did get an enquiry through about some work that I wasn't really keen on doing as it was in a bit of an awkward location and the work itself didn't really seem particularly interesting, I gave a quote that was quite a bit higher than what I normally charge... and I still got the work!!

U should also take into consideration the risk that U carry as a part of any fees charged plus any 'none earnings' time and having different rates for different situations is not a bad way to go and look at a what hours a day is needed noting that the rates noted by Ian B in my view are realistic I was approached only last week to work for a charity at £10.00 per hour and they were quite put out when I wanted to discuss money as they felt that as they were a charity then anybody working for them for payment should think like a charity but did admit that their accountant, solicitor, marketing manager and Chief Officers did not work for £10.00 per hour so it can be horses for courses Best of luck