In the UK there is no "legal" definition for where competent Health & Safety advice to a business should sit within the organisation as there is no statutory requirement to actually and directly employ an advisor.

My first role in H&S was reporting to the Personnel Manager (nowadays called Human Resources Manager).

Over the decades I have been lucky to report directly to the MD or CEO. I have also reported to the Finance Director, Technical Manager - basically anywhere the employers organisational arrangements saw fit.

As to a CEO actually having any better understanding of H&S than your direct line manager I very much doubt it - one of the measures of senior management is how much can be delegated down to others.

In my role I don't even have a defined position. I only answer (directly) to the directors on anything H&S related, but I still take my day to day orders from the factory manager for any "additional" duties that may arrise. To be honest I don't even have a specified job title, I am just "H&S".

I also take on a small amount of HR, help run the documentational side of the engineering department and, currently, run the COVID-19 testing. Moving forward it accepted that QA will take over the time that COVID-19 currently uses up.

I think the long and short of it is that you are placed wherever those in charge want you to be. Afterall, if the proverbial does hit the fan it is up to them to prove they had placed you in the correct position. That being said, you can always appeal to the CEO to allocate the H&S resources better.

Hi Katerina, perhaps the problem is not so much where you sit within the organisation but the rules for communication.

If you cannot send ANY email, report etc without sign off by a line manager, then your hands are severely tied, and more so if your line manager does not have your level of specialist understanding.

Usually, I would expect some rules (whether written or not) that set out your autonomy to communicate without someone else's sign off, and direction as to where anything should be signed off or routed  via someone else.

So, as example, I should imagine that the CEO does NOT want to see everything you produce. They are likely to have views as to either what they want to be included in on your circulation list, or when others should escalate what you say to them.

In 29 years working for the same company before and after it was acquired I have had all sorts of reporting arrangements and all sorts of written and unwritten rules as to how I should communicate and to whom.

As my role in the company progressively moved from a position where my concern was almost entirely about internal compliance to one which was almost entirely client facing, so those rules changed accordingly.

So, my suggestion is that your starting point is to talk to your line manager and ask whether they actually want to vet everything you want to say before distribution. They probably don't, particularly if it means them taking on responsibility for the quality of what you say, when the subject matter may be out of their depth - which is precisely why you are in post.

Hi Katerina, do you have to have everything singed off by the HR Manager or can you do somethings yourself and report to them after the decision or action has been made?  As the above have suggested, the top line of management may not want or need to be read into everything you do.  Is there an H&S manager as well or are you 'the H&S person"?   If, for example you wanted to send a comment to a contractor about how their staff have opeated on site, would that have to go via the HR Manager or can you do it directly?  If the former then thats fine, if its the latter then it sounds like the HRM has some delegation issues.  You could do the old overload appraoch and send them a copy of EVERYTHING you do until the point comes where they either crumble or apply a degree of common sense.   There are lots of ways this could be opened up, one of which is to have a chat with the HR Manager and come up with an agreement as to what must be signed off and what doesn't and move forward from there.  At this stage I wouldn't consider the vague innuendo that if any of your reports that should be suitable to go to directors are blocked that the 'blame/fault/responsibility would lay with the HRManager.  They probably kow already and thats why they are so cautious.