Health and Safety Policy for Construction Accreditation: What Assessors Actually Check

If you have been bounced back by a scheme portal, it was probably not because your safety is bad. A health and safety policy for construction accreditation gets rejected on mechanical, checkable details — who signed it, what date is next to the signature, whether a named director is shown as the health and safety contact, and whether the arrangements describe the work you actually do. Fix those four things and most policies pass. That is worth knowing before you pay a consultant £600 to retype your own document.

TL;DR

All the main schemes — CHAS, SafeContractor and SMAS Worksafe — are SSIP member schemes, so your policy is measured against the same threshold: SSIP Core Criteria element 1. That criterion requires a suitable policy whose statement of intent is signed by the Managing Director or equivalent and dated within the previous 12 months, with roles and responsibilities defined down the chain of command and a named health and safety contact who is a director of the business (SSIP Core Criteria, page last updated 04/09/2026). The Health and Safety Executive requires the policy in writing once you employ five or more people, in three parts: statement, organisation, arrangements (HSE). The single most common avoidable fail is a stale signature date; the second is a downloaded template describing work you don't do. You do not need a different policy per scheme — you need one policy that is current, specific and consistent with the other documents you upload.

Why does a health and safety policy fail a construction accreditation assessment?

Assessors are not marking your prose. They are ticking a criterion, and criteria are binary. SSIP publishes the standard its member schemes assess against, and element 1 — "Health & Safety policy and organisation for Health & Safety" — is written as a short list of verifiable facts rather than a quality judgement (SSIP Core Criteria). That is why a genuinely safe firm with twenty years of clean sites can fail on a document, and why the fix is usually a ten-minute job rather than a rewrite.

The mechanism matters. The scheme's assessor has to be able to point at evidence for each bullet. If your statement of intent is unsigned, they cannot tick "signed by the Managing Director or equivalent". If it is signed but dated 2023, they cannot tick "dated from within the previous 12 months". Nothing about your actual safety performance enters into it at that stage.

What do CHAS, SafeContractor and SMAS assessors actually check?

Because CHAS, SafeContractor and SMAS Worksafe are all SSIP member schemes, the underlying policy standard is the same in each. What differs is the portal wording, the upload process and how much the assessor comes back to you for clarification. The substance below comes straight from SSIP's published criteria.

What are the three sections a compliant policy must have?

The Health and Safety Executive sets out the same three-part shape that SSIP assessors look for, which is convenient: write it once for the law and it works for the scheme (HSE: how to write your policy).

1. 1
   Statement of intent. Your general policy on health and safety, your commitment and your aims. HSE says the employer or most senior person should sign it and review it regularly; SSIP tightens "regularly" to a signature dated within the previous 12 months. One page is plenty.
2. 2
   Organisation and responsibilities. The names, positions and roles of the people with specific health and safety responsibility — from director down to operative. SSIP's criterion expects a named health and safety contact who is a director of the business, so put that name in, not a job title on its own.
3. 3
   Arrangements. The practical detail of how you manage the risks — risk assessments, RAMS, training, COSHH, accident reporting, plant and tool inspection, welfare, subcontractor control. SSIP element 2 asks that these are proportionate to your size and set out how you discharge duties under current legislation, including CDM 2015.

Worked example: a 12-engineer M&E firm applying for SSIP

Say you run a 12-engineer electrical and mechanical firm doing commercial maintenance. You download a template, change the company name and upload it. Here is what an assessor working through element 1 sees, and what it costs you.

The statement of intent is signed "For and on behalf of the company" with no name and dated 2024. That is two misses in one line: no identifiable MD signature, and outside the 12-month window. The responsibilities section says "the Health and Safety Manager is responsible for..." — but you have no H&S manager, and no director is named, so the assessor cannot verify the named-director contact. The arrangements section covers scaffolding and excavation (from the template's generic construction origin) but says nothing about working on live circuits, safe isolation, working at height from steps and podiums, or asbestos awareness when lifting ceiling tiles in a 1970s office block. Element 2 wants arrangements proportionate to the work you actually do.

The fix is not a rewrite. It is: the MD signs and dates the front page this week; the responsibilities section names him as the director responsible for health and safety, names the supervisor who runs site inductions, and states what operatives must do; and the arrangements section deletes the scaffolding and excavation paragraphs and replaces them with safe isolation, working at height, COSHH for the products actually on the van, and asbestos awareness. That is an afternoon at the kitchen table, and it is the same afternoon whether you are applying to CHAS, SafeContractor or SMAS.

Do you need a written policy if you employ fewer than five people?

The Health and Safety Executive is clear that if you have five or more employees you must write your policy down, and if you have fewer than five you do not legally have to — though HSE says it is still useful (HSE). Accreditation is a different question from the law. SSIP states that organisations with fewer than five personnel are expected to provide proportional documented evidence to meet the Core Criteria and legal requirements, with the proportionate approach taking account of both headcount and the risk profile of the work (SSIP organisational capability criteria).

In practice, for a sole trader or a three-man firm that means a short, honest, signed policy rather than no policy. Note too that SSIP counts personnel as permanent, temporary and part-time staff plus labour-only subcontractors within the assessment scope — so if you regularly run three labour-only lads alongside two employees, you may be over the line without thinking of yourself as a five-person business.

Do you need a separate policy for each accreditation scheme?

No. One current, specific policy serves all of them, because they all assess against the same core criteria. Where schemes already hold a valid assessment from another SSIP member, Deem to Satisfy mutual recognition means you should not be reassessed from scratch — our guide to SSIP mutual recognition covers what that does and doesn't cover. Constructionline is worth a mention here too: Constructionline states that its paid memberships include SSIP through Once For All Health & Safety at no extra cost (Constructionline), so the policy you write is doing work across more than one badge.

The residual admin is the annoying part, and it is real: the same signed policy has to be re-uploaded into each portal you hold, and the 12-month signature clock resets every year regardless of when each scheme's renewal happens to fall. That is the job TradeComply takes off your hands — tracking each scheme's renewal date and flagging when a document like the statement of intent has gone stale — for £9.90 a month. A calendar reminder set 30 days before each renewal does part of it for nothing. See our guide to accreditation renewal deadlines for the cycles.

What else gets sent back, and what fixes it

The cross-check row is the one small firms miss most. If your policy says operatives receive annual toolbox talks and your uploaded training records show nothing for two years, the policy is fine and the evidence isn't — but the application still stalls. The document checklists for each scheme are set out in our CHAS documents checklist and the guide to SafeContractor application requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should a health and safety policy be for a small contractor?

There is no required length. SSIP element 2 asks that arrangements are proportionate to the size of the business and the kind of work undertaken, so a focused 8–15 pages that describes your actual trades will pass where a generic 60-page document may not.

Who has to sign the health and safety policy for CHAS or SafeContractor?

The SSIP Core Criteria state that the statement of intent must be signed by the Managing Director or equivalent and dated within the previous 12 months. In a small limited company that is the owner-director; in a sole trader business it is you.

Can I use a free health and safety policy template?

Yes, as a starting structure — HSE publishes guidance on the three sections a policy needs. The failure point is submitting it unedited: SSIP's own guidance flags generic policies that don't reflect the work the company performs as a common issue, so strip out anything you don't do and add what you do.

Does a health and safety policy need reviewing every year?

For accreditation purposes, effectively yes. SSIP guidance says the policy should include a review date of at least once a year, and element 1 requires the statement of intent to carry a signature dated within the previous 12 months, so an annual re-sign is the practical minimum.

Will the same policy work for CHAS, SafeContractor, SMAS and Constructionline?

One policy is enough. All are assessed against the same SSIP Core Criteria, and Deem to Satisfy means an existing valid SSIP approval should be recognised rather than reassessed — though you will still have to upload the document into each portal you hold. Our comparison of CHAS vs SMAS Worksafe covers where the schemes differ on cost and assessment.

Last reviewed: 11/09/2026.