Why you need a HSE First Aid Kit

What Should Be in a Workplace First Aid Kit?

There is no legally required list. That surprises most people who go looking for one, and it is the single most useful thing to understand before you buy anything.

The Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 require employers to provide adequate and appropriate equipment.

What counts as adequate is not set out in a table somewhere. It comes from your own first aid needs assessment, which means two businesses on the same industrial estate can legitimately hold very different kits. That said, you are not starting from nothing.

There is a suggested minimum, there is a British Standard, and there are a few items that should never be in the box at all.

The HSE suggested minimum for low hazard workplaces. HSE guidance offers a starting point for workplaces where the risks are low, such as offices, shops and light commercial settings.

It suggests:
 

• A leaflet giving general first aid guidance
• 20 individually wrapped sterile plasters in assorted sizes
• Two sterile eye pads
• Four individually wrapped triangular bandages
• Six safety pins
• Six medium sterile wound dressings
• Two large sterile wound dressings
• At least three pairs of disposable gloves
   

This is a suggestion, not a requirement. HSE is explicit that it is only a guide, and that your assessment governs.
 

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The British Standard, and why it is optional

BS 8599-1 is the British Standard specifying contents for workplace first aid kits.

The current version dates from 2019 and covers small, medium, large and travel kits, alongside personal issue and critical injury packs. It is more comprehensive than the HSE suggested minimum. It adds items such as burn dressings, foil blankets, resuscitation face shields, clothing shears and eyewash. Here is the part that trips people up.

HSE states plainly that buying a BS 8599-1 kit is not a regulatory requirement. You have two legitimate routes.

Either you use a kit that complies with the standard and meets or exceeds what your needs assessment found, or you use a kit that meets your assessment without complying with the standard at all.

A British Standard kit will not make you compliant on its own, and a non-standard kit will not make you non compliant. The assessment is what matters in both cases.
 

What your assessment should be looking at

The right contents follow from the actual hazards in your workplace.

A few examples of how that plays out:
 

1. Kitchens and catering.
2. Burn dressings and blue detectable plasters, which are visible if one comes off near food.
3. Workshops, engineering and manufacturing.
4. Eyewash, larger trauma dressings, and clothing shears for accessing an injury through workwear.
5. Construction and groundworks.
6. Catastrophic bleeding provision, including tourniquets and haemostatic dressings, where the risk assessment supports it.
7. Care settings and nurseries.
8. Additional gloves and infection control provision, and kit stored where it is reachable but not by children.
9. Remote or lone workers.
    

A personal issue kit carried in the vehicle, not a wall-mounted box back at base. Also consider distribution rather than just contents.

One large kit at the far end of a site is worse than three smaller ones placed where injuries actually happen.
 

Keeping it maintained

A kit that has not been checked in two years is a compliance record rather than a piece of equipment.

Sterile items carry expiry dates and should be replaced by them. Where sterile items have no date, HSE suggests checking with the manufacturer for a shelf life. Non sterile items come down to judgement about whether they remain fit for purpose.

Set a review interval, name someone responsible, and log the check. Most organisations do it quarterly.

The nominated first aider or appointed person is the natural owner.

 

The short version
 

Your first aid needs assessment decides your kit.

The HSE suggested list is a reasonable floor for low risk settings.

The British Standard is a useful benchmark but not a legal obligation. Leave the medication out, and check the contents on a schedule you actually keep to.

If you are unsure whether your provision is adequate, that question usually arrives alongside a bigger one about how many trained first aiders you need.

We are happy to talk both through before you book anything.

References
 

1. Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 (Legislation.gov.uk)