It is easy to obtain a list of legislation that is applicable to your organsation. There is, however, a whole lot of legislation that falls within the health, safety and environmental sphere that is not available on the internet but which are applicable to your organisation.

Other examples of legislation that are usually dealt with by health and safety professionals include:

• Consumer protection legislation.
• Public health legislation.
• Basic conditions of Employment legislation.

The amount of legislation enacted is increasing; in 2008, there were approximately 1567 Statutory Instruments, in 2009 - approximately 2466, and in 2010 - approximately 2878 etc. Does your organisation have a reliable procedure for identifying all relevant legislation?

Have you identified all the requirements imposed by all relevant items of legislation?

Whilst some legislation is available to download, free, from the internet, it does not keep legislation up-to-date with all the amendments.

Are you systematically measuring the extent to which your organisation is complying with relevant legislation?

Once you have the relevant legislation and have identified what the requirements are for your organisation then you need to assess your level of compliance to that legislation and then regularly review your compliance. This is normally achieved by some type of formal inspection. Such inspections enable you to identify areas for improvement and measure your effectiveness.

Gathering the information is one thing but then analysing it correctly and producing meaningful reports is another!