When expired H&S training becomes a liability

In 2024, a worker at London Gates and Railings lost his lower leg after being hit by a forklift. The HSE investigation identified a number of failings, including inadequate workplace controls and a lack of forklift training. The company was fined £40,000.

In a different case, an agency worker at Flowchem UK suffered chemical burns to her face, eye, neck and arm after opening the wrong valve on a bulk container of corrosive liquid. The HSE found shortcomings in the company’s control measures, supervision and training arrangements. The fine was £50,000.

In 2026, Askern UK was fined £24,395 after a worker had two fingers partially severed by a printing machine. The investigation found multiple failings, including inadequate machine safety arrangements and a lack of training on the machine’s safety devices.

In every one of these cases, the HSE asked the same question: was the injured person trained to do the work they were doing? The answer, in every case, was no. Or not properly. Or not recently enough to count.

What the HSE looks for after an accident

When someone is injured at work and the HSE investigates, training is one of the first things that they examine.

They’ll want to see evidence that:

• The person was trained for the specific task they were doing

• The training was relevant to the actual risks involved and that it was current

• That you can prove that the training happened

The legal basis for this is clear. Section 2(2)(c) of the Health and Safety at Work Act requires employers to provide whatever information, instruction, training and supervision is necessary to keep employees safe. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations go further: training must be provided on recruitment, when risks change and repeated periodically.

If someone is injured doing a task that they weren’t adequately trained for, the employer is in a vulnerable position. The same applies in a civil claim. If an employee’s solicitor can show that training was absent, expired or irrelevant to the work being done, the case against the employer is straightforward.

How training lapses without anyone noticing

Most businesses don’t deliberately let training expire. It drifts.

First aid certificates are valid for three years. If nobody is tracking the renewal date, they lapse and nobody picks it up until someone needs a first aider and the certificate is six months out of date.

Fire safety training is recommended annually. Many businesses deliver it in the first year and never revisit it. Staff change, premises change, but the training stays stuck in the past.

Often, manual handling training gets done once during induction and never refreshed, even when the role changes. An employee who was trained on light warehouse duties four years ago is now regularly handling heavier loads, but nobody has updated the training to reflect that.

New starters get a desk and a password but no proper H&S induction covering the specific risks in their workplace. The person who used to manage training has left the business and nobody has picked up the responsibility.

In small businesses, these gaps tend to compound. There’s no training matrix tracking who was trained on what and when it’s due for renewal. Nobody has a clear overview. And because nothing has gone wrong yet, it doesn’t feel urgent.

Until something does go wrong.

The records problem

Even if training did happen, if you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen.

The HSE doesn’t accept “I’m pretty sure we covered that”. They want records. Certificates. Signed attendance sheets. A training matrix showing what was delivered, when and to whom.

In the 2024/25 reporting year, the HSE completed 246 prosecutions with a 96% conviction rate, resulting in over £33 million in fines.

A record doesn’t need to be complicated. But it does need to exist and it needs to be accurate and up to date. Who was trained. On what. When. When the next refresher is due. If that information doesn’t exist somewhere in your business, you have a gap that could cost you.

How we can help

We help businesses to build a training matrix, identify what training their team actually needs and make sure that nothing lapses unnoticed. We can also carry out a training audit to tell you where the gaps are right now.

If you’re not sure whether your team’s training is current, or whether your records would stand up to scrutiny, get in touch to discuss how we can help.