Posted By RP I suppose its a matter of weather the person will stand up in court and say 'Yes guv, I did the risk assessment'. Its about verifying the evidence presented and onership of proof...beyond reasonable doubt.

Posted By Adrian Watson Jonathan, Where does it say that risk assessments must be signed? Regards Adrian

Posted By Jonathan Sandler CMIOSH In INDG 163 5 steps to risk assessment the document requires to user to sign and date, this therefore, being a legal document, if used in court, can it therefore be argued that all risk assessments would have to be signed? as this is a legal document.

Posted By Jonathan Sandler CMIOSH Adrian, But do you like the argument re 5 steps? yes agreed that it makes good practice, but would you accept an emailed risk assessment? Regards

Posted By Jonathan Sandler CMIOSH Can not an ACOP by used in court as evidance? should therefore risk assessments, whether under section 2.2 (record) 3.1 (Carry out) or 6 (COSHH) and what about PPE? (training); be signed and dated?

Posted By Robert K Lewis There is a useful Proprties option in the "File" area of most software and this can tell you some awfully useful information on the history of the document. Denial of authorship then becomes a bit problematic. These days a copy of the email transmission attached to the printed assessment is likely to be sufficient. Store the posting electronically also. Even the courts are beginning to come round to such practices. I do, however, see it as important that the persons using the assessment have signed a record somewhere that they have read the document, at the current revision level, before they undertake work. Bob

Posted By Ron Hunter A half-decent scanner costs £40. It takes minutes to scan and bitmap a signature, and a lot less to cut and paste this onto any document. I can't see that this has to be an issue.

Posted By Mark Talbot What has been written about ACOPs is broadly correct. However, "5 Steps" is a leaflet, not an ACOP. The ACOP issued with the Mngmt Regs does not include any requirement to sign, and indeed says that electronic form is fine (they would recognise that at a normal user level, these documents would not be signed in the traditional meaning). Good practice to sign them (I always require them to be signed and dated for all the good reasons mentioned above by others) - but not a legal requirement per se. From "5 Steps": This leaflet contains notes on good practice which are not compulsory but which you may find helpful in considering what you need to do.

Posted By EE Personally I do NOT think there is a legal obligation for the author to sign the risk assessment. What we do - is name the author + review team in the latest version & get the operational manager & the affected employees to sign off the review / acceptance of the risk assessment as well. This improves acceptability of the assessment & shares the mitigation.

Posted By Stuart Nagle All. I agree with many of the comments; in that there does not appear to be any legal requirement for a signature to appear on a risk assessment. I would however venture that the person carrying out the risk assessment, unless this is indicated by another means, should have their name appear on the assessment or there is no evidence to support who undertook the assessment or reviewed it, where the element of competency to undertake the assessment kicks in.... Again, this would be good practice as there is no legal requirement I can find to put a name on it either. in respect of emailing assessments, there is already legal precident set by the courts that accepts emails as being as legal and binding as forms of communication set down on paper and signed (e.g. contracts etc), and I would expect that this would logically extend to any attachments to emails, such as a risk assessment, that was forwarded from one party to another and being directly related to the content of email - the task in hand, as one presumes this would be indicated in the email sent from an identifiable person to another. Stuart

Posted By Jonathan Sandler CMIOSH Ok so then why does the 5 steps say sign in box?

Posted By Jerry Lucey Goodmorning Jonathan, I don't feel that it is necessary to have risk assessments signed, however there has to be some process whereby those allocated actions under a risk assessment accepts that action. In my opinion a signature demonstrates the responsible manager's acceptance of the risk assessment. A minuted meeting attended by those who have responsibilities under the risk assessment with those present accepting the risk assessments would be acceptable. I would suggest that if this is the preferred option that the meeting minutes be attached to the same mail as the risk assessment(s) discussed. An e-mailed risk assessment makes those concerned aware that a risk exists but does not demonstrate their acceptance of the risk assessment carried out and this does need to be verified.

Posted By AlB As has been said, Risk Assessments do not need to be signed from a legal standing, but it is useful in the event of a court case or other legal proceeding in that is identifies beyond reasonable doubt who the author was, but that is just suggested good practice. My bug with Risk Assessments is that the actual Risk Assessment, once written, means nothing - it's the actions taken following the identification of risks that is important. At the end of the day, if a risk assessment is not conducted thoroughly enough, then it doesn't matter who prepared it - it's still inadequate. The identification and competence of the person carrying out the risk assessment should have been established BEFORE the risk assessment was even written.