Contractor selection, control and monitoring, UK wide
Contractor Management and Supply Chain Safety
When a contractor is hurt on your premises, the first question is what you did to satisfy yourself they were competent and what you did to check the work once it started. A folder of certificates answers neither. AL23 Safety builds contractor management arrangements that stand up to that question, for clients UK wide.
What is contractor management?
Choosing, controlling and checking, not collecting certificates
Contractor management is the set of arrangements by which you decide who is competent to work for you, tell them how your site operates, control the high risk parts of their work and verify what they did. It runs from procurement through to handover, which is why it usually breaks. Procurement holds the selection stage, facilities holds the site stage and nobody owns the join.
Proportionality matters here. A window cleaner attending twice a year does not need the scrutiny applied to a roofing contractor working above an occupied building. The same pack for both wastes effort at one end and misses risk at the other.
Who needs one
Anyone who brings other people onto their site
- Landlords, managing agents and facilities teams instructing planned and reactive maintenance.
- Manufacturers and warehouses using specialist installers and engineers alongside production.
- Schools, care homes and healthcare providers with trades working around vulnerable people.
- Retail and hospitality operators running fit outs while the premises stay open.
- Any client procuring construction work, where the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 place named duties on you personally.
- Principal contractors managing a supply chain of subcontractors and labour only trades.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
The central duty is short. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 section 3 requires every employer to conduct their undertaking so that people not in their employment are not exposed to risks to their health or safety so far as is reasonably practicable. Contractors, their employees, visitors and passers by all sit inside that. Section 3 is the provision most often used in prosecutions following contractor incidents. It cannot be transferred by a clause in a purchase order.
HSWA 1974 section 3
Your duty to people who are not your employees. Appointing a contractor does not discharge it. It changes what reasonable practicability looks like.
HSWA 1974 section 2
Your own employees must be protected from risks created by contractors working alongside them.
MHSWR 1999 regulations 3 and 5
Risk assessment covering contractor activity, plus arrangements for planning, control, monitoring and review.
CDM 2015
Where the work is construction you hold client duties, including suitable arrangements for managing the project and satisfying yourself that appointees have the necessary skills, knowledge, training, experience and organisational capability. Our CDM consultant services cover the client role in full.
SSIP core criteria
Not law, though derived from CDM 2015 Appendix 4. They are what a health and safety pre-qualification assessment is measured against across the recognised schemes.
What the service covers
From banding at selection to the handover check
- A contractor risk banding that matches scrutiny at selection to the hazard rather than the invoice value.
- A pre-qualification pack sized to each band, avoiding a 40 page questionnaire for a low risk visit.
- Verification of insurance, competence, training records and trade registration where the work requires it.
- Review of submitted risk assessments and method statements for the actual task rather than a generic version.
- Site induction content, including emergency arrangements, the asbestos register, restricted areas and reporting routes.
- Signing in, escorting, badge and vehicle arrangements for people who do not know the building.
- The interface with your permit to work system, including which contractor activities need a permit and who issues it.
- Supervision expectations, naming who checks the work on your side and how often.
- Active monitoring during the job, incident reporting duties both ways and a handover check at the end.
- Performance review, retention on the approved list and the route for removing a contractor.
Where a certificate stops being evidence
A scheme certificate tells you a contractor passed a documented assessment against the core criteria at a point in time. That is useful and it removes duplicated paperwork across the supply chain. It does not tell you that the two operatives arriving on Tuesday are trained, that the method suits your building or that the equipment has been maintained since.
Mutual recognition, known as deem to satisfy, covers the Stage 1 core criteria health and safety assessment only. It does not extend to scheme specific add-ons such as financial, environmental, quality or building safety modules. It does not oblige you to accept a scheme your framework does not name. Around 90,860 suppliers were registered with an SSIP member scheme as at January 2026. The certificate is a filter rather than a differentiator, which is why our SSIP and accreditation support sets out what each scheme actually covers.
Harassment duties on shared sites from 30 October 2026
The Employment Rights Act 2025 changes the preventative duty from 30 October 2026. This is confirmed legislation that has not yet commenced. From that date the duty is to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees rather than reasonable steps, with tribunal compensation uplifts of up to 25 per cent where the duty is breached. The third-party harassment duty is also extended beyond sexual harassment to other protected characteristics, excluding marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity.
For shared and multi-employer sites that is a practical change rather than a policy one. Third parties include contractors, clients, customers, service users and members of the public. Conduct by a visiting trade towards your staff falls inside your duty. Conduct by your staff towards theirs falls inside your contractor's. Site rules, induction content, reporting routes that work for someone without your staff login and a documented response process all need to be in place. The Equality and Human Rights Commission reported in June 2026 that policies alone are not effective. What works is consistent implementation, review and tailored repeated training.
Our process
Map it, band it, then test it at the gate
- 01
Map
We list who comes on site, what they do, how they were selected and who currently owns each stage.
- 02
Band
We set risk bands and match the level of pre-qualification, induction, permit and supervision to each one.
- 03
Build
We write the procedure, questionnaires, induction content and monitoring forms, sized for the people who will run them.
- 04
Test on site
We observe a live contractor visit from arrival to sign out. The gap between the procedure and the gate is where the risk lives.
- 05
Review
We set the reassessment cycle, the performance measures and the trigger points for removing a contractor.
What you get
Proportionate controls, sized for the people who run them
- A contractor management procedure defining roles, bands, approval authority and escalation.
- A tiered pre-qualification pack with a scoring guide that keeps decisions consistent between buyers.
- Induction material for contractors, in a format you can deliver at the gate or online.
- A monitoring and inspection regime with frequency by band, plus the recording forms behind it.
- A gap report on your current arrangements, including the harassment duty changes taking effect on 30 October 2026.
What we need from you
Your current list and a visit to observe
- Your approved contractor list, with the trades and services each one provides.
- The current pre-qualification questionnaire, induction and any framework agreements.
- Recent contractor incidents, near misses or complaints, including ones handled informally.
- Access to a live contractor visit so we can watch the arrangements in operation.
Why AL23 Safety
Scrutiny that goes where the hazard is
Accountable
If your approved list contains contractors nobody has checked since 2019, we will say so and give you a way through it.
Proportionate
We push back on questionnaires that ask a two person firm for a corporate management structure. Scrutiny goes where the hazard is.
One team, three disciplines
Hot works, fire alarm isolations and compartmentation breaches by contractors get reviewed with fire safety input in-house.
UK wide
We support contractor management across the UK. We build and test the arrangements. The section 3 duty stays with you.
Not sure what your contractors are doing on site today
A single observed visit usually settles the question
Tell us how contractors are selected and who meets them at the door. We will tell you where the arrangement is thin and what a proportionate fix looks like.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usIt satisfies the health and safety pre-qualification stage and saves duplicated paperwork. It does not confirm the competence of the individuals attending, the suitability of the method for your site or the condition of their equipment. Use it as the filter, then assess the job.
No. A contract can allocate cost and indemnity between the parties. It cannot move the duty under section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which the courts treat as non-delegable. Good contract terms help. They do not replace selection, induction and monitoring.
Enough to know whether the agreed controls are being used. In practice that means a documented check on high risk work while it is happening, spot checks on medium risk work and a review at completion. The law sets no frequency. We set one by risk band and record the reasoning.
Yes, in a practical sense. From 30 October 2026 the duty rises to all reasonable steps for sexual harassment and the third-party duty extends to other protected characteristics. On a shared site your induction, site rules and reporting routes are the mechanism by which those steps are taken. The duty is not yet in force, which makes now the sensible time to prepare.
Cost depends on the number of contractors and sites, whether an approved list already exists and how much of the pack must be built from scratch. A single site review with an observed contractor visit and a rewritten procedure is a short project. A group wide standard is larger. Tell us the contractor numbers and we will scope it.
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