Charities, volunteers and community organisations, UK wide
Charity and Not for Profit Health and Safety
Charities carry the same legal duties as commercial employers while running on volunteers, borrowed premises and budgets with no room for a preventable claim. AL23 Safety provides health and safety and fire safety support to charities, community organisations and not for profit bodies across the UK.
Why it matters in the charity sector
The risks are real and so are the duties
The Health and Safety Executive states the position plainly. Health and safety law bites once an organisation has at least one employee or is self-employed and employs others. Where that is true, section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 protects your employees and section 3 protects your volunteers as persons not in your employment. HSE expects volunteers to appear in your risk assessments and to receive the same level of protection as an employee facing an equivalent risk in a similar activity. That single sentence undoes the most common assumption in the sector, which is that unpaid help sits outside the system.
Where a voluntary organisation has no employees at all, statutory health and safety law generally does not apply. HSE names two important exceptions itself. Section 4 duties bite where volunteers control non-domestic premises, which is exactly the position of a village hall committee. CDM 2015 client duties bite where volunteers procure construction work. Even outside those exceptions the common law duty of care and negligence liability remain, which HSE says explicitly. A charity with no employees is exposed to a claim rather than to a prosecution. The claim is the thing that closes small charities.
Trustees sit above all of this. The Charity Commission guidance *The essential trustee* (CC3) sets six duties, including managing the charity's resources responsibly and complying with relevant law including health and safety law. CC3 contains no detailed safety content. What it does contain is a five step risk management model of policy, identification, assessment of likelihood and severity, evaluation of action and review. Trustees can be personally liable to the charity for losses caused by improper conduct, although the law generally protects trustees who acted honestly and reasonably.
The main risks
Where the harm comes from
Manual handling of donations
Moving bagged donations, furniture and stock in cramped back rooms produces the sector's most frequent injury and HSE names poor posture alongside weight as the driver.
Sharps and contamination in donated goods
HSE calls out hypodermic needles and other sharps hidden in donated bags and contamination from soiled goods, which makes a sorting procedure and gloves a control rather than a courtesy.
Lone working
Shop opening and closing, home visiting, befriending, food banks and outreach all put a single person in a situation with no witness and no immediate help.
Blocked escape and stockroom storage
Donated stock accumulates against fire exits and above head height in stockrooms, which puts items falling from height and obstructed escape routes in the same place.
Fundraising events
Temporary structures, generators and cabling, crowd movement, traffic and pedestrian segregation and medical provision all appear at once, usually run by people who do it once a year.
Community transport
Minibus work under a permit brings driver licensing, vehicle maintenance, passenger assistance and wheelchair securing into a charity that has no transport manager.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is the foundation. Section 2 covers employees, section 3 covers everyone else affected by your undertaking including volunteers and beneficiaries and section 4 covers anyone who has control of non-domestic premises used as a place of work. Section 2(3) requires a written health and safety policy once you have five or more employees and its absence is one of the most common findings in the sector. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, recorded where you have five or more employees. Fire is governed by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, enforced by your fire and rescue authority.
Beyond safety law, the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires cover of at least £5 million for employees. Volunteers are not employees so that Act does not compel cover for them. Charity Commission guidance CC49 says charities should treat volunteers in the same way as employees for insurance purposes and that policies must explicitly cover volunteers, define the term and address age restrictions and covered activities. Trustee indemnity insurance can be bought from charity funds under section 189 of the Charities Act 2011 where the governing document is silent. Not for profit passenger transport runs on section 19 and section 22 permits under the Transport Act 1985, with standard permits covering vehicles of 9 to 16 passenger seats and large bus permits covering 17 or more.
One honest limitation. The 2017 and 2018 reform of section 19 and section 22 permits has a long tail and we could not establish a settled position on the point at which a not for profit operator must instead hold a public service vehicle operator licence. We will not draw you a bright line that does not exist. Where your transport looks marginal we say so and put the question to the Traffic Commissioner rather than guess on your behalf.
Fire safety in charity premises
Storage against the exits and volunteers who hold the duty
Since section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 commenced on 1 October 2023, the responsible person must record the fire risk assessment in full regardless of how many people are employed. For a small charity that runs a hall or a shop with two paid staff, that is a change in duty rather than a change in good practice. The arrangements, the responsible person's name and address and the identity of whoever carried out the assessment all have to be recorded as well.
In charity retail the fire issues are storage led. HSE names fire risk from storage near heaters on its charity retail page. In practice the recurring finding is donated stock stacked against a final exit or in the protected route to it. In village and community halls the responsible person is usually the management committee, a group of volunteers who may never have been told they hold the duty. Occupancy varies wildly between a toddler group and a wedding reception so a single figure on the wall is not a strategy. Where you run larger fundraising events or occupy a venue that meets the thresholds in the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, the public protection procedures required by that Act should be written into the same emergency plan as your fire evacuation rather than kept in a separate folder.
How we help
Built around your operation
We work at the scale you actually operate at. A single shop with three paid staff and forty volunteers does not need the same document set as a national charity with a property portfolio and we do not sell one to the other.
- Volunteer risk assessment, written so that volunteers appear in the assessment by role rather than as a footnote, with the section 3 duty explained to trustees in language they can act on.
- Trustee level briefing that maps the CC3 duties onto a health and safety framework, including the five step risk model and the reporting a board needs to see.
- Charity shop reviews covering manual handling, sharps procedures for donation sorting, racking and stockroom storage and the escape route condition a fire officer will look at first. See our retail health and safety work for the wider picture.
- Lone working arrangements for shops, home visiting, outreach and food banks, built on INDG73 and including check-in, escalation and the work-related violence content that guidance requires.
- Fire risk assessment for halls, shops, offices and day centres, recorded in full to meet section 156.
- Event safety support for fundraisers, from a summer fete to a ticketed event, covered in more depth on our event safety management page.
- A written health and safety policy and the supporting documentation set, which we cover on our health and safety policy page.
- Community transport support covering driver competence, vehicle checks, passenger handling and the permit conditions you operate under.
Why AL23 Safety
Sector-aware support that gets used
Accountable
If your volunteers are missing from your risk assessments or your escape route is a stockroom, we write it down and set out the fix rather than softening it for a board meeting.
Practical, not just compliant
Charity documents fail when they are written for an inspector. Ours are written for a shop manager, a duty volunteer and a treasurer who will read them once.
One team, three disciplines
Health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering in-house, which matters when a hall with a difficult escape route needs an engineering answer rather than another open action.
Nationwide
We support charities and not for profit organisations across the UK from our Manchester base.
Get in touch
Proportionate help, not a compliance industry
Tell us how many paid staff you have, how many volunteers and what buildings you control. We will tell you what the law actually requires of you before we quote for anything.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usIf your charity has at least one employee, yes. Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 protects volunteers as persons not in your employment and HSE expects them to be given the same level of protection as an employee doing similar work. If you have no employees at all, statutory duties generally do not apply, with two exceptions HSE names itself, which are control of non-domestic premises under section 4 and CDM client duties when you commission construction work.
Trustees can be personally liable to the charity for losses caused by improper conduct and the law generally protects those who acted honestly and reasonably. CC3 requires trustees to comply with relevant law including health and safety law and to manage resources responsibly. In practice the protection is evidence. A board that receives and minutes safety reporting is in a very different position from one that never asked.
Not automatically. The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 compels £5 million of cover for employees only and volunteers are not employees. Charity Commission guidance CC49 says charities should treat volunteers in the same way as employees for insurance and that the policy must explicitly cover them, define the term and address age limits and covered activities. Read the schedule rather than assuming.
The drivers are the number of premises you control, whether you run retail, transport or events and how many paid staff you employ, since that sets which duties are recorded ones. A single hall fire risk assessment is a short visit and a report. A multi site charity with shops, a fleet and an events programme is a phased programme. Pay as you go is £95 per hour or £695 per day plus VAT and retained support starts at £95 per month for smaller organisations. Call us and we will scope it honestly.
Related services