Studios, locations and live sets, UK wide
Film and TV Production Health and Safety
A production assembles a temporary workforce, a temporary building and a temporary power network on an unfamiliar site, then asks all three to perform to a schedule that cannot slip. AL23 Safety provides health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering support to production companies, studios, facilities houses and location teams across the UK.
Why it matters in film and TV production
The risks are real and so are the duties
The Health and Safety Executive is your enforcing authority and it stays your enforcing authority wherever you shoot. Schedule 2 paragraph 3 of the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998 reserves the activities of a radio, television or film undertaking to HSE. That matters more than it sounds. A shoot inside a shopping centre, an office or a hotel sits in premises the local authority would normally enforce, yet the production activity itself remains HSE territory. Where an inspector finds a material breach, Fee for Intervention runs at £188 per hour from 1 April 2026.
HSE has published for this industry for years. INDG360, Health and safety in audio-visual production: your legal duties, is the starting point. The ETIS series carries the detail, including ETIS16 on special or visual effects involving explosives or pyrotechnics, ETIS17 on stunts and fights, ETIS18 on buildings used for locations and temporary studios, ETIS20 on firearms and other weapons and ETIS22 on filming involving vehicles. HSG260, Sound advice, covers noise in music and entertainment.
We should be straight with you about two things. First, we could not identify a verified regulatory change specific to UK film and television safety in 2025 or 2026. We will not manufacture one. The live pressures are general rather than sectoral: falls from height accounted for 31 of the 126 workers killed in 2025/26, fatigue and turnaround times in high-end television are a live industrial issue and Martyn's Law will reach studio tours, premieres and public-facing venues. Second, we are Manchester based and work with productions across the UK. We do not publish a figure for the size of the regional production cluster, since we could not verify one.
The main risks
Where the harm comes from
Stunts, fights and action sequences
ETIS17 territory, where the failure is almost never the stunt itself but the absence of a written assessment for that sequence and no evidence of the coordinator's competence.
Working at height and rigging
Lighting grids, trusses, tallescopes, cherry pickers on uneven location ground and rigging over occupied areas, with suspended loads engaging thorough examination under the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.
Temporary electrical distribution
Generators, cable runs across public routes, residual current protection and wet-location filming, where rain effects and temporary distribution in the same space is a recurring high-risk combination.
Night shoots, driving and fatigue
Long turnarounds followed by crew driving home after a fourteen hour night, which is a Working Time Regulations 1998 question and a road risk question at the same time.
Pyrotechnics, special effects and atmospherics
Explosives licensing, exclusion zones, misfire procedure and separate control of smoke, haze and cryogenic fog for respiratory and visibility risk.
Locations and set construction
Derelict buildings with asbestos and uncertain structural condition, floor loading limits, means of escape, plus set walls, greenbeds, rostra and water tanks built at speed inside someone else's building.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
Sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 carry the duty to your crew and to everyone else affected, which on location means the public. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require the risk assessment and, under regulation 11, co-operation between the production, the location owner and every supplier sharing the site. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 apply to rigging and de-rig without modification. The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 govern suspended loads and lifting accessories. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 cover temporary distribution, read alongside the temporary installation provisions of BS 7671. The Explosives Regulations 2014 govern the acquisition, storage and use of pyrotechnics, licensed by the local authority or by HSE depending on quantity and type, with the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 applying to flammable atmospheres. The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 apply on the floor as much as in the auditorium. The Diving at Work Regulations 1997 apply wherever diving occurs. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 applies to animals on set. The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 apply to set construction, which is the point most often missed.
Where CDM 2015 bites on a set build
Set construction is construction work within the regulation 2 definition where it involves the construction, alteration, assembly or disassembly of a structure. Where more than one contractor is involved, the client must appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor in writing and a construction phase plan is required. In practice the production company is the client, the production designer or construction manager occupies the designer role and the construction manager occupies the principal contractor role. Notification to HSE on form F10 is required where construction lasts longer than 30 working days with more than 20 workers on site simultaneously or exceeds 500 person days. HSE's current film pages do not spell out that allocation. Treat the mapping as our professional position rather than as published guidance. The underlying thresholds are standard and are not in dispute. Our CDM consultant services page sets out how the duty holder roles work in full.
The safety passport position
The ScreenSkills Production Safety Passport is an approval scheme built on four National Occupational Standards, allowing freelancers to move between jobs without repeating their training. X2 is general awareness of risks to health and safety, X3 is workplace risk assessment, X3.5 is managing health and safety on film and TV productions and X4 covers procedures for safely controlling work operations. All production staff are recommended to reach at least X2. Heads of department, unit managers, production managers and first assistant directors are expected to qualify to X3.5. Approved providers include the BBC, ITV and Netflix alongside specialist safety training companies. It is a broadcaster and production company contractual requirement in practice. It is not a legal requirement. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a course.
Fire safety in film and TV production
A set is a combustible building nobody applied for
A standing set is a structure inside a structure. It is usually timber and board, it changes weekly, it carries temporary lighting and cable, it frequently obstructs the escape routes and detection coverage the host building was designed around. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 the production is a responsible person for the areas under its control, alongside the studio or the location owner, which engages the article 22 duty to co-operate. Whoever holds the building fire risk assessment needs to see the set drawing before it is built, not after.
The practical list is short and it repeats. Escape route widths and travel distances measured against the set as built rather than as designed. Compartmentation and fire doors held open by cable runs. Detection isolated for atmospheric effects and never reinstated, which is the single most common cause of an unprotected overnight period. Hot work during construction and strike, controlled by permit. Flame retardant treatment of drapes, scenery and set dressing with certification retained. Pyrotechnic and naked flame sequences assessed separately, with an exclusion zone, a standby fire watch and a defined post-shot period before anyone re-enters. Storage of flammables, foams, solvents and gas cylinders in a location that has been through a DSEAR risk assessment rather than in the nearest empty corner. Where a production opens to the public for a tour, a premiere or an audience recording, the crowd, stewarding and evacuation planning is closer to venue work than to studio work, which we cover under event safety management.
How we help
Built around your operation
We work to a production schedule, not a consultancy one. That means a recce attended in person where it matters, a document that fits in a call sheet folder and an answer while the decision is still open.
- Production risk assessments with separate written assessments for the high-consequence sequences, which is the gap HSE looks for first.
- Location recces and location risk assessments under ETIS18, covering structural condition, asbestos, floor loading, means of escape, supply adequacy, welfare and public interface.
- Review of specialist supplier competence and documentation for stunts, armourers, special effects, animal handlers, marine units and drone operators.
- Temporary electrical distribution review, covering generator siting, earthing and bonding, cable management and inspection records for the installation.
- Work at height and rigging plans, lifting plans and thorough examination checks for accessories, under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 hierarchy.
- Fatigue and turnaround assessment, using HSG256 Managing shift work as the reference point, since there is no film-specific HSE fatigue guidance.
- CDM 2015 support for set builds, covering duty holder appointment, the construction phase plan and F10 notification where thresholds are met.
- Fire risk assessments for studios, workshops and standing sets, plus fire strategy input where a set materially changes how a building performs.
- Noise assessment on the floor and in post, under the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 and HSG260.
- Incident investigation and HSE liaison if something does go wrong on a shoot.
Why AL23 Safety
Sector-aware support that gets used
Accountable
If a sequence should not be shot the way it is storyboarded, we say so on the recce rather than in a report issued after the unit has wrapped.
Practical, not just compliant
A risk assessment nobody reads before the first setup has failed. We write documents a first assistant director can brief from in three minutes.
One team, three disciplines
Health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering in-house. The person who looks at your pyrotechnic sequence is in the same office as the person who assesses the building it happens in.
Nationwide
We are Manchester based and we support productions across the UK, on location and in studio.
Get in touch
Send us the schedule and the script pages that worry you
Tell us the locations, the build, the sequences involving height, water, fire, vehicles or animals, plus the shoot dates. We will tell you what needs a separate assessment and what needs a specialist on the day.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usHSE. Schedule 2 of the Health and Safety (Enforcing Authority) Regulations 1998 reserves the activities of a radio, television or film undertaking to HSE, which holds even in premises the local authority would otherwise enforce. The local authority still handles filming permits, street closures and pyrotechnic storage licensing depending on quantity. Police handle firearms and road closures.
No. The ScreenSkills Production Safety Passport is not a legal requirement. It is widely written into broadcaster and production company contracts. In commercial terms you may well need it. The legal duty is competence under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which the passport helps evidence rather than replaces.
Where the work involves constructing, altering, assembling or dismantling a structure, it meets the regulation 2 definition of construction work. With more than one contractor involved you need a principal designer, a principal contractor and a construction phase plan. Notification on F10 follows the standard thresholds. HSE does not publish a film-specific allocation of those roles. We set out our reasoning and let you take a view.
It depends on the number of shoot days, how many locations there are, whether there is a build and whether the schedule contains stunts, effects, water or animals. A single location recce and risk assessment is project work. A series or a slate is usually a retained arrangement so the same consultant knows the show. Ad hoc work runs at £95 per hour or £695 per day plus VAT and our retainers start at £95 per month, rising through Core at £250 and Advanced at £550. Call us with the dates and we will tell you honestly whether we can cover them.
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