Does an employer owe contractors safety duties?

The warehouse owns the forklifts. The food factory controls the chemicals. Being paid by someone else does not let either leave your safety to you. Whether you clean their floors, repair their roof or unload their deliveries, they can owe you duties alongside your own employer or agency.

What you can do today

1. Find the person responsible. Get the site controller’s name and contact details. If you are supplied by an agency, keep its contact too.
2. Get the risk briefing. Ask about vehicle routes, chemicals, machinery isolation, emergency exits and first aid. If the job could disturb asbestos, ask for the relevant asbestos information before touching the material.
3. Check how the work will be made safe. Ask who provides equipment, training and supervision, and how your work will be separated from other activity. A high-vis vest does not make an active forklift lane safe.
4. Record the problem without entering danger. Save messages, dates and witness names. Take photographs only if safe. Report the hazard to the site controller and your employer or agency in writing.

If danger is immediate, get to safety first. A report to a supervisor is useful evidence, but it does not guarantee protection against retaliation. We explain the legal test and tribunal deadlines below. This guide states the law at 1 October 2026 for England, Scotland and Wales, with Northern Ireland’s separate rules at the end.

Who owes what to whom

Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires every employer to run its undertaking without exposing people outside its employment to health or safety risks, so far as reasonably practicable. “Undertaking” means the business or activity it carries on. You do not need to be its employee for this duty to apply.

That protects the outsourced cleaner in a supermarket, the agency carer in a care home and the self-employed electrician in a factory. The duty depends on risks arising from the business, not simply on who owns the building. Your own employer also owes its employees duties under section 2, including safe equipment, systems of work, training and supervision. Section 4 places duties on people controlling non-domestic work premises, access routes, plant or substances, to the extent of their control and so far as reasonably practicable.

“Contractor” describes an arrangement, not a legal status. You might be an employee of a cleaning company, a worker engaged personally or genuinely in business for yourself. Agency work overlaps those categories. Read our employment-status guide if the label on your contract does not match the job. Outsourcing the work does not remove the host’s own statutory duties.

Shared responsibility means sharing the risks

Regulation 11 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires employers sharing a workplace, even temporarily, to cooperate, take reasonable steps to coordinate safety measures and tell each other about risks from their work. It also covers self-employed people sharing the workplace.

Regulation 12 requires the host to give outside workers’ employers comprehensible information on relevant risks and safeguards. People working in the host’s undertaking who are not its employees must receive appropriate instructions and comprehensible risk information too. The rules also cover emergency information. A briefing you cannot understand is not enough.

Each organisation answers for its own breach. The contractor’s unsafe method does not automatically absolve the host, and the host’s failure does not excuse the contractor. Responsibility for an injury depends on what each party controlled, knew and should have done.

Construction sites and CDM 2015

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, usually called CDM, have applied since 6 April 2015. They cover construction work on small projects as well as large sites, including repairs, refurbishment and domestic projects. The client arrangements below describe commercial projects. On domestic jobs, duties normally transfer to the contractor or principal contractor; different arrangements can apply with a principal designer.

The commercial client must make suitable management arrangements, allow sufficient time and resources, and ensure welfare facilities. Where more than one contractor is involved, or reasonably foreseeable, the client must appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor. This can include contractors working at different times. The principal contractor plans, manages, monitors and coordinates the construction phase, organises cooperation, provides site inductions and prevents unauthorised access.

Your contractor employer still has to plan, manage and monitor its own work. On a single-contractor project, the contractor prepares the construction phase plan. A project being too small for HSE notification does not exempt it from CDM.

Schedule 2 requires suitable and sufficient toilets, washing facilities, drinking water and rest facilities. Washing water must be hot and cold, or warm, with soap and drying facilities. Toilets can be shared by men and women if each is in a separate room lockable from inside. Changing rooms are required where special clothing and the circumstances make them necessary; lockers are required where necessary. Rest facilities need tables, seating with backs, meal arrangements and means to boil water, with lying-down facilities for pregnant or nursing workers where necessary.

The principal contractor must ensure construction-site welfare, or the contractor on a single-contractor project. A toilet without suitable washing facilities is a safety problem, not a perk you failed to negotiate.

What the client must check before you start

The client must choose contractors capable of doing the work safely. On construction projects, skills, knowledge, experience and organisational capability matter. A card or accreditation does not answer every question about the job. The contractor must also have the equipment, information and time needed to do it safely.

Every employer must assess risks to its employees and to other people affected by its undertaking. With five or more employees, it must record the significant findings and groups especially at risk. Smaller employers still have to assess risks. The host assesses its activities and site risks; your employer assesses its work method. Relevant findings must reach the people doing the work. A method statement is useful, but it is not a substitute for assessing the actual job.

For asbestos in non-domestic premises, the duty to manage rests on whoever has the relevant maintenance or repair obligations, or control of the premises, under regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. That dutyholder must identify and assess the risk and provide relevant information to people likely to disturb the material. Do not drill, strip or cut suspect material because a supervisor says the contractor should have checked it.

Refusing unsafe work without losing your livelihood

Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 protects workers against detriment for certain responses to danger. Since 31 May 2021 this protection has covered workers who are not employees too. It has no minimum-service requirement. Detriment can include losing shifts or other punishment.

For leaving or refusing to return, you must reasonably believe the danger is serious and imminent, and it must be danger you could not reasonably have been expected to avert. Refusal to return is protected while the danger persists. There is also protection for taking appropriate steps to protect yourself or others from danger you reasonably believe serious and imminent. What is appropriate depends on the circumstances, including your knowledge and the advice and facilities available.

Employees have additional protection for specified safety activities and raising concerns under section 44. If an employee is dismissed for a qualifying safety reason, section 100 provides an automatic unfair dismissal route without a qualifying period. That dismissal right is for employees, not every worker. Neither provision makes every disagreement about safety a protected refusal.

If you can do so safely, tell your employer or agency what the danger is, where you have moved and that you are available for safe work. Keep the messages and rotas before and after the incident. Do not resign in haste. A genuinely self-employed person cannot use sections 44 or 100 on that status, but can report danger to the regulator and seek advice on contractual or other civil remedies.

Do not miss the claim deadline

Acas confirms that, for problems occurring on or after 1 October 2026, most tribunal claims have a basic limit of six months minus one day. For most problems before that date, the limit remains three months minus one day. Do not assume the reform revives an older claim. Get advice promptly if there are repeated incidents or a dispute about when the claim arose.

Notify Acas within the applicable limit. Timely notification for early conciliation pauses the clock; a grievance, an appeal or a report to HSE does not. The final deadline after conciliation needs its own calculation.

Agency work, pregnancy and protective equipment

The agency and hirer must exchange information about the job, required skills and known risks before supplying you. The hirer must give you the workplace briefing. Agency workers also have day-one rights to equal access to shared facilities, subject to the Agency Workers Regulations’ rules. Safety protection is not something you earn by completing the equal-pay qualifying period.

If you are pregnant and have a medical certificate saying you should not work nights, regulation 17A requires the hirer to inform the agency and the agency to stop supplying you for that night work. This does not automatically guarantee paid day shifts. Under government agency-worker guidance, after the 12-week qualifying period, pregnancy-related safety risks can trigger rights to suitable alternative work at no less favourable pay, or agency payment for the remaining expected assignment if none is available. Unreasonably refusing suitable alternative work can affect payment. Pregnancy discrimination protection is separate.

Where PPE is required for an employee or eligible worker, it must be suitable and provided free. The PPE extension from 6 April 2022 covers “limb (b)” workers, who undertake personal work without genuinely running a business for that client. It does not extend this free-PPE right to genuinely self-employed people. If safety shoes or protective gloves are required for your job and you qualify, your employer cannot make you pay for them. Ask the agency and hirer to identify who will provide them before you start.

PPE is the last resort, not permission to leave the hazard in place. Other rules govern chemicals under COSHH, work at height, noise, electricity, manual handling and work equipment under PUWER. They supply the detailed requirements behind the general safety duties.

Reporting danger and getting help

Tell your union or safety representative as well as management. A collective report can put the same hazard in front of the host and contractor together. You can approach Unite, UNISON, GMB or IWGB about membership and representation for your sector, including if you work through an agency.

HSE enforces in sectors such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture. Local authorities generally enforce in shops, offices and hospitality. Use HSE’s contact routes to report a workplace concern or find the appropriate authority. Give the location, the hazard, who controls the work and what has already been reported. If you are injured, seek medical help, keep records and ask who is making any required RIDDOR report. Not every injury is reportable.

Regulators can serve improvement notices requiring a breach to be put right, or prohibition notices stopping dangerous activity, and can prosecute. A company can face an unlimited fine for a safety offence. An injury is not a prerequisite for enforcement. Conversely, an injury alone does not prove which organisation breached its duty.

For punishment or lost shifts, contact Acas for employment-rights advice and early conciliation, and speak to your union, Citizens Advice or a law centre. A report to HSE will not itself recover your wages or bring a tribunal claim for you. A safety disclosure may also engage whistleblowing law if its conditions are met. Our whistleblowing guide explains that route.

Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales

The main duties described here apply across England, Scotland and Wales. Scotland uses the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service for criminal prosecutions. HSE does not prosecute Scottish cases itself. Civil procedure also differs, so take local advice on an injury claim.

In Northern Ireland, article 5 of the Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 imposes the corresponding employer duty towards people outside its employment. HSENI and district councils enforce under Northern Ireland’s separate legislation, including its own management and construction regulations. Use HSENI and nidirect guidance. Do not apply this guide’s GB tribunal deadlines or sections 44 and 100 directly to a Northern Ireland claim. Employment law is devolved there.