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What is a health and safety audit?
A health and safety audit is a structured review of how well an organisation manages workplace health and safety. It looks at whether policies, procedures, training, and day-to-day working practices are effective, compliant with regulatory standards, and helping to reduce risk.
Health and safety audits can range from a quick site inspection to a more detailed review of an organisation’s full safety management system. For example, an audit might check whether risk assessments are up to date, whether employees have received the right training, whether equipment is being maintained properly, and whether incident or near-miss actions have been completed.
Essentially, a health and safety audit helps answer a simple but important question – are we doing what we said we would do to keep people safe?
In the UK, employers have a legal duty to protect the health, safety, and welfare of employees and others affected by their work activities, such as contractors, visitors, and members of the public, under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health and safety in Great Britain.
A health and safety audit is one of the most effective ways to check that your organisation is meeting its duties, managing risk, and continuously improving.
Audits can be:
- Internal: carried out by trained people within the organisation. These are useful for regular checks, monitoring standards across sites, and keeping health and safety visible.
- External: carried out by an independent third party. These may be required for certification, such as ISO 45001.
This glossary focuses mainly on internal health and safety audits – the type safety teams, managers, or competent persons carry out to understand performance, identify gaps, and drive improvement.
What does a health and safety audit look at?
A health and safety audit usually looks at three main areas:
Management systems
This checks whether the organisation’s health and safety strategy is clear, supported by leadership, and properly embedded across the business.
Documentation and records
This may include reviewing safety policies, risk assessments, training records, inspection logs, maintenance records, incident reports, and previous audit actions.
Practical implementation
This looks at what is actually happening in the workplace. Auditors may observe tasks, inspect work areas, speak to employees, and check whether day-to-day behaviours match documented procedures.
A good health and safety audit should test whether procedures are understood, followed, and effective in real working conditions.
What are the key stages of a health and safety audit?
Most health and safety audits follow four key stages.
1. Planning and preparation
Before the audit begins, the auditor should define the scope. This might include a specific site, department, process, activity, or compliance area.
They should gather relevant documents, such as policies, previous audit reports, risk assessments, legal requirements, training records, and incident data.
Employees should also be told what the audit involves so they understand the purpose and know what to expect.
2. Fieldwork and evidence gathering
This is the practical part of the audit. The auditor will gather evidence by reviewing records, observing work activities, inspecting the workplace, and speaking with employees and managers.
This stage helps identify whether safety controls are being followed in practice, whether employees understand their responsibilities, and whether risks are being managed effectively.
3. Reporting and feedback
The findings will be recorded and analysed in a report. This should highlight good practice as well as areas for improvement.
Any non-conformances, hazards, or gaps should be clearly documented, with a priority level and recommended corrective actions.
4. Action planning and follow-up
An audit only adds value if action is taken. Corrective actions should be assigned to responsible people, with deadlines, and tracked through to completion.
Follow-up reviews help confirm that actions have been completed and that they have reduced the identified risk.
How does a health and safety audit support continuous improvement?
Health and safety audits are closely linked to the Plan-Do-Check-Act model, often used in occupational health and safety management systems.
In this model:
- Plan means setting your safety standards, identifying hazards, completing risk assessments, and defining objectives.
- Do means putting those plans into practice through training, communication, equipment maintenance, PPE, and safe systems of work.
- Check is where the health and safety audit sits. It measures whether your plans are being followed and whether they are working.
- Act means using the findings to improve your processes, update controls, and prevent issues from recurring.
Without the ‘Check’ stage, organisations can end up assuming their safety arrangements are effective without evidence. Without the ‘Act’ stage, audits become tick-box exercises rather than a tool for continuous improvement.
How to carry out an effective health and safety audit
Start by defining the scope. Be clear about what you are auditing, why you are auditing it, and what standards or procedures you are auditing against.
Next, review the documentation. This includes risk assessments, safe systems of work, policies, training records, maintenance logs, incident records, and previous corrective actions.
Then complete a physical walkthrough. Look for immediate hazards such as blocked emergency exits, slip and trip risks, missing guards, poor housekeeping, or incorrect PPE use. Observe how tasks are actually being completed and whether shortcuts are being taken.
Staff interviews are also important. Speaking to frontline workers, supervisors, and managers helps you understand the safety culture behind the policies. For example, do employees know how to report a hazard? Do they understand emergency procedures? Do they feel able to raise concerns?
Finally, turn findings into action. Every significant issue should have a clear owner, deadline, priority level, and follow-up process.
Best practices for health and safety audit reporting
Health and safety audit reporting should make it easy to understand what was checked, what was found, and what needs to happen next.
Best practice includes:
- Using standardised templates so audits are consistent across teams and sites.
- Recording evidence clearly, including notes, photos, locations, and supporting documents.
- Prioritising findings by risk level so urgent issues are addressed first.
- Assigning corrective actions to named people with realistic deadlines.
- Tracking actions through to completion.
- Reviewing trends over time to spot recurring issues.
This is where safety audit software can make a significant difference. Instead of relying on paper forms, spreadsheets, and email follow-ups, digital audit tools help safety teams capture evidence, assign actions, automate reminders, and monitor progress in one central place.
Notify’s Audit Management Software allows you to create, schedule, assign, and oversee audits, inspections, and checklists. It also supports mobile completion, reusable custom templates, action tracking, and real-time safety insights.
What features should you look for in a health and safety audit app?
The right health and safety audit app should make audits easier to complete, manage, and learn from.
Useful features include:
Custom audit templates
Create templates for different sites, departments, activities, or risk areas.
Mobile and offline access
Frontline teams should be able to complete audits on the go, including in areas with poor connectivity.
Photo evidence and notes
Auditors should be able to add context directly from the workplace.
Corrective action management
Findings should be turned into assigned actions, with owners, deadlines, reminders, and progress tracking.
Non-conformance logging
Issues should be recorded clearly within the audit so they can be investigated and resolved.
Permissions and visibility
Different users may need different levels of access depending on their role, site, or department.
Dashboards and reporting
Dashboards help teams view open, completed, and overdue audits, monitor KPIs, and identify trends by site, category, or department.
When connected with wider workplace health and safety software, audit data becomes even more powerful. It can be linked with incident management, risk assessments, corrective actions, company documents, and safety intelligence dashboards to give a more complete picture of organisational risk.
How can Notify help with workplace health and safety audits?
Notify’s health and safety software helps organisations move from reactive safety management to a more proactive approach by giving teams better data, visibility, and control. Notify’s platform is designed to help businesses reduce risk and evidence governance, so your workforce works safe and goes home safe.
With Notify’s audits and inspections software and mobile app, teams can create templates, schedule checks, complete audits on the go, assign actions, and track progress.
Check out our customer case studies to see how Menzies Distribution Solutions and Merseyside Scouts have seen the benefit of Notify’s Audits and Inspections Software.
FAQs
Notify’s audits and inspections app supports teams completing audits on the go, including in remote locations where signal may be limited. Checks can be completed locally and synced back to the cloud once connectivity is restored.
The best tool ultimately depends on your organisation’s size, risk profile, industry, and reporting needs.
Notify is a strong option for UK organisations looking for cloud-based health and safety software, with a dedicated module for safety audits, inspections, and checklists.
Notify is consistently rated highly on platforms such as G2 for streamlining health and safety audits and inspections.
One review states, “Audit planning is a doddle, as is setting up template forms and dependable questions. Any business could easily be up and running with Notify with very little impact on resources if needed, in a very short space of time.”
Customers such as Menzies Distribution Solutions have seen success with the audit software, completing over 5,000 timely audits in 2025- a five-fold increase compared with the period before Notify.
Notify’s audit and inspection module can be connected to wider H&S processes such as incident management, risk assessments, document management, and safety intelligence dashboards – so you can proactively manage and mitigate workplace risk with confidence and evidence HSE compliance.
Book a free no-obligation demo to see the software in action.
Most organisations should carry out a formal health and safety audit at least annually. Higher-risk environments may need more frequent audits.
Audits should also be completed after significant changes, such as new equipment, processes, substances, legislation, or following a serious incident or near miss.
With Notify, you can set up automated reminders for audit reviews, so you never miss a deadline.
An internal health and safety audit can be carried out by a competent person with sufficient training, experience, knowledge, and objectivity.
For some certifications or assurance requirements, an independent external auditor may be needed.
In the UK, employers have a legal duty to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of employees and visitors, and to manage workplace risk under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
UK law does not always require a specific “health and safety audit” by name. However, health and safety audits are an effective way for organisations to carry out safety checks, identify hazards, demonstrate that policies and controls are in place, and evidence compliance.
Organisations can face significant fines, and individuals may be prosecuted, for failing to protect staff or ignoring workplace hazards.