Lone working risk and controls, UK wide
Lone Worker Risk Assessments
Working alone is not automatically unsafe. It becomes unsafe when nobody would notice for hours that something had gone wrong. AL23 Safety assesses lone working, designs the check in and escalation arrangements behind it and tests whether they actually work, for clients UK wide.
What is a lone worker risk assessment?
A written answer to one question. Who would notice that something had gone wrong?
A lone worker risk assessment identifies who works without close or direct supervision, what could go wrong while they are alone and what happens next. The controls it produces are usually organisational rather than physical. Who checks in, at what interval, what triggers escalation, who responds and how quickly they can reach the person.
The assessment also has to reach a conclusion about the work itself. Some tasks carry a residual risk that no communication system reduces. For those the honest answer is a second person rather than a better device.
Who needs one
Far more roles than the classic image of the night security guard
Lone working covers anyone working out of sight or earshot of a colleague for any meaningful part of their day. That includes people who are alone inside a busy building.
- Care, housing and health staff visiting homes, including out of hours.
- Engineers, surveyors and maintenance staff attending unoccupied or remote sites.
- Retail, hospitality and petrol forecourt staff opening or closing alone.
- Drivers, delivery crews and mobile technicians covering long distances between calls.
- Cleaners, security officers and caretakers working outside normal occupancy hours.
- Farm, waste, utilities and grounds staff working across large sites where the nearest colleague is a field away.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
There is no lone working regulation. No statute defines a lone worker, sets a check in interval or bans working alone. The duty is built from general law, which is why enforcement in this area turns on the quality of your risk assessment rather than on a checklist. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 section 2 requires safe systems of work for employees and section 3 extends the same protection to contractors, agency staff and self-employed people working for you.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 3
A suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks, which must consider lone working explicitly where it happens rather than treat it as part of the general task assessment.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 5
Effective arrangements for planning, control, monitoring and review of the controls you decide on.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 8
Procedures for serious and imminent danger, naming competent people to put them into effect. This is the legal home of your escalation route.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 10
Information for employees on the risks and the preventive measures, in a form the person working alone can use at the point of need.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 13
Capabilities and training. The person must be capable of the work alone, which is a different judgement from being capable of it with a colleague present.
Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981
Adequate and appropriate provision, which is harder to satisfy for someone working alone off site than for a staffed building.
What we assess
Every profile that puts someone out of reach
- Who works alone, when and for how long, built from rotas and job records rather than from opinion.
- Violence and aggression, covering abuse and threats as well as assault, with the history of incidents and near misses that staff have reported informally.
- The environment. Lighting, parking, entry and exit, dogs, drug paraphernalia and whether the person can leave quickly.
- Medical fitness to work alone, including epilepsy, diabetes, cardiac conditions, pregnancy and medication effects, handled confidentially and with occupational health input where needed.
- Remote and isolated work where mobile coverage fails and the nearest colleague is an hour away.
- Driving, including hours behind the wheel, night driving, fatigue, vehicle condition and what happens after a breakdown.
- The communication method, its coverage, battery life and whether the person can raise an alarm while under threat.
- Check in intervals, who monitors them and what happens when a check in is missed at three in the morning.
- The escalation route, named responders, keyholder access and the point at which the emergency services are called.
- Training and confidence, including conflict avoidance, disengagement and the authority to leave a situation without asking permission.
- Young people, new starters and agency workers, who should not usually be working alone at all until assessed.
Tasks that should not be done alone
Some work should be taken off the lone working list rather than controlled.
Confined space entry
The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 require rescue arrangements to be in place before entry, which effectively rules out solo entry. Our confined space safety work covers the standby and rescue roles this creates.
Live electrical work
Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 regulation 14 permits work on or near live conductors only where it is unreasonable for the conductor to be dead, where it is reasonable to work live and where suitable precautions are taken. Where accompaniment is one of those precautions, the work is not a lone task.
High risk work under permit
Anything issued under a permit to work system usually needs a second person for verification, standby or handback.
Known high aggression visits
Where an individual has previously threatened staff, a two person visit or a withdrawal of service is the control, not a body worn alarm.
Our process
Map the roles, then test the response
- 01
Scope
We map every role and task that involves working alone, including the informal ones nobody has written down.
- 02
Assess
We assess each profile against violence, health, environment, travel and communication, then rate the residual risk honestly.
- 03
Design controls
We set check in intervals, escalation triggers, responder roles and the tasks that require two people, sized to your actual out of hours cover.
- 04
Test
We run a missed check in scenario. The number of arrangements that fail this test the first time is the reason we run it.
- 05
Embed
We write the policy, brief managers and set the review triggers so the assessment moves when the work does.
What you get
Controls sized to your real out of hours cover
- A lone working risk assessment by role and task, not one document covering the whole organisation.
- A written lone working policy stating who may work alone, who may not and who decides.
- A check in and escalation procedure with intervals, named responders and out of hours contact detail.
- A specification for any monitoring or alarm technology, written before you go to suppliers rather than after.
- A findings report with a prioritised action list, separating legal gaps from improvements.
What we need from you
The rotas and the people who work alone
- Rotas, job lists and visit records showing who is alone and when.
- Any incident, near miss or abuse records, including the informal log a team leader keeps.
- Your current policy, devices and monitoring arrangements if you have them.
- A conversation with two or three people who actually work alone. They will tell us what the procedure does not.
Why AL23 Safety
We specify the device but never sell it
Accountable
If a task should not be done alone, we say so plainly rather than recommend a device and leave the risk with your staff.
Practical, not just compliant
Check in intervals have to match your real out of hours cover. An hourly check with nobody monitoring at night is worse than none.
Independent on technology
We specify what an alarm or app must do. We do not sell the hardware. The recommendation is not a sales route.
UK wide
We assess lone working across the UK, in care, housing, retail, utilities and field service. The duty stays with you. We make it manageable.
Not sure whether your arrangements would hold
A missed check in is the test. Most systems fail it once
Tell us who works alone and how they check in today. We will tell you where the gap is and what closing it involves.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usNo. There is no law preventing people from working alone and no lone working regulation. The duty is to assess the risk under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and to control it under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Some specific tasks, such as confined space entry, are ruled out in practice by their own requirements.
Not always. A device is one control among several and it only helps if someone is monitoring the alerts and able to respond. We assess whether your existing arrangements, phone based check ins or shared calendars are adequate first. Where a device is justified, we write the specification before you approach suppliers.
The law sets no fixed interval. Review when the work, the people, the locations or the hours change, after any incident or near miss and on a scheduled cycle. Annually is the interval most organisations can defend, with an immediate review after an act of violence.
It can be. An act of physical violence at work that causes a specified injury is reportable without delay with a written report within 10 days. Where it stops the person doing their normal work for more than 7 consecutive days, it is reportable within 15 days. Verbal abuse alone is not reportable but should still be recorded.
Usually not at first. Regulation 13 requires capability to be considered. Lone working demands judgement that comes with experience. We normally recommend a period of accompanied work with a documented sign off before anyone is added to the lone working list. Our risk assessment services cover the young person assessment that sits alongside this.
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