How much do health and safety companies charge?
How much do health and safety consultant cost or consultant daily rate? Well when you hear the word consultant, you probably clutch your wallet in panic! However, you may be surprised by what the going rate is for a health and safety consultant and in some cases using a health and safety consultant may make great financial sense.
We have looked at various different health and safety consultants, to try and bring you some figures on what you can expect to pay for a health and safety consultant.
Larger Health and Safety Consultant Cost, Consultant Daily Rate
There are a number of health and safety companies that provide packages to assist you in meeting your health and safety requirements. They base their pricing on the number of employees that your company has. Clients must recognise that a higher consultant daily rate often reflects the value and quality of the services provided.
We’ve looked at the bigger health and safety companies that publish their pricing and found:
- For an organisation that employs 5 people, you are looking at an average monthly cost of £125.
- For an organisation that employs 100 people and around £360 a month.
- For more than 100 employees these companies provide a bespoke quote.
For these prices, these companies will generally help you hit a number of legal requirements such as:
- Development and review of health and safety documentation
- Assistance with risk assessments
- Access to health and safety advice via telephone
- Updates of changes in health and safety legislation and guidance through webinars, bulletins and e-learning.
Now, I have very purposefully not referred to these companies as consultancies because they are more like service providers. They provide a package of things that will help you meet a selection of legal duties. It highlights the significance of negotiating the health and safety consultant daily rate based on the specific project scope and deliverables.
There is very little face-to-face contact included in these packages and as such, the majority of the policies, documents and assessments they provide will be based on generic templates, with some specific elements added.
For example, company names and names of people with health and safety responsibilities.
Some of the more expensive companies do provide annual health and safety audits as part of the package, however, this is unlikely to give enough insight to make your health and safety management system fully specific to the needs of your organisation. Factors such as industry trends, market competition, and unique skill sets can also influence the health and safety consultant daily rate.
These packages may provide a basic level of compliance for some lower-risk organisations, which have a pretty standard set of risks and requirements, however for many companies, you will have to edit these documents to make these specific to your organisation or pay someone to do this before you are fully legally compliant.
In addition, this is still pretty expensive for what you get, for example, iSAFE provides an office health and safety management package from just £50 per month which hits specific requirements of your business.
Smaller / Typical Health and Safety Consultancies
Ok, so let’s look at the more typical health and safety consultants. These are generally small organisations that employ 1 to 10 consultants. There are a few that use the package model, which we mentioned earlier, however, the majority of these companies will provide a much more personal service, spending time on your site to get to know your business and its specific requirements. Clients seeking consulting services should be aware that the cheapest health and safety consultant daily rate may not always offer the most comprehensive solutions.
Most of these types of businesses charge a daily or hourly rate. Companies are a little cagey about publishing their prices, however, of the UK companies which publish their prices, it seems that the average hourly rate is around £45 per hour and the average daily rate is around £420 per day.
In this case, the team at iSAFE are happy to admit that we are below average!
A health and safety consultant may offer a fixed rate on services like audits and accident investigations; however, this rate is typically linked to the daily or hourly rate.
Obviously, this can vary depending on the region of the UK where the consultancy is based and the level of competence of the health and safety consultant. Similarly, consultancy offering specialist or niche services such as DSEAR assessments or radiation advice will likely charge a higher rate.
On the flip side, a specific health and safety consultant, especially iSAFE, might offer reduced rates influenced by factors like ongoing work, proximity to our office, and organisational status, such as being a charity. Consequently, the related costs may demonstrate significant variability.
In addition, Health and safety consultants will likely charge a mileage rate (usually £0.45 per mile in line with HMRC guidance) and any expenses such as overnight accommodation or plane/train tickets where required. Health and safety consultants will also often be VAT registered so you can add VAT to all the figures quoted.
How does all of this compare?
Now all this may sound remarkably expensive, however, employing people to manage safety is expensive too. The average health and safety manager costs around £230 per day to employers and this number excludes company cars, phones, IT equipment, ongoing training costs, professional membership fees and other employee benefits. So although health and safety consultants are more expensive, they are not wildly overpriced.
Many businesses do not want or need a full-time health and safety person but still, need access to a competent source of safety advice to meet the requirements of health and safety law. In these cases, health and safety consultants are a great option for meeting your legal obligations because consultants aren’t at your business every day and will only charge you for the work you do.
The average iSAFE client is allocated between 6 and 12 days per year, depending on their organisations’ individual requirements. During this time we ensure that all your specific health and safety needs and requirements are met. As you can imagine this is far cheaper than employing someone, even someone part-time.
Hiring a safety consultant can be a cost-effective solution for businesses that do not require a full-time health and safety manager. With an average cost of £230 per day, a safety consultant provides businesses access to competent safety advice, meeting legal obligations without incurring the additional expenses associated with employing dedicated personnel.
Do you need a health and safety consultant?
If you are interested in using iSAFE as your health and safety consultant and your competent source of health and safety advice, please get in touch and we will arrange a free no obligation initial consultation and a very competitive quotation.
