Most farmers fill in the risk assessment once, file it, and never look at it again. The HSA knows this. Their inspectors know this. And when something goes wrong, that document is the first thing they ask for.
Getting it right is not about impressing anyone. It is about making sure the things most likely to hurt or kill someone on your land are written down, controlled, and reviewed. The HSA's farm risk assessment document is the tool for doing that. Here is how to use it properly.
What the Document Is Actually For
The HSA risk assessment template for farms is a structured form that walks you through identifying hazards on your holding, deciding who could be harmed, rating the risk, and recording what controls are in place. It does not replace a safety statement, but it feeds directly into one. Under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, every employer including most farm operators must have a written safety statement based on a risk assessment. The document gives you the evidence that the assessment was done.
If you want to understand where this sits in the broader legal picture, the changes brought in by the new farm safety code of practice shift what a compliant assessment needs to cover. Read that before you start if your farm has not been reviewed in the last two years.
Section 1: Farm Details and Persons Completing the Assessment
Fill this in fully. Name, address, farm type, date. List every person involved in completing the assessment, not just the owner. If a contractor, family member, or agricultural student works on the land, they count.
The date matters more than people think. An undated assessment is treated as no assessment at all by inspectors. If you reviewed it last year and conditions have changed, update the date and note what changed.
Section 2: Identifying the Hazards
This is where most assessments fall short. The document provides a hazard checklist across multiple categories. Work through each one properly.
Tractors and mobile machinery. Do not just tick yes. Write what you have: one tractor, a loader, a slurry tanker. Note whether PTO guards are in place, whether ROPS is fitted, whether any machine is older than the safety standards that apply. An unguarded PTO shaft takes less than a second to cause an entanglement injury that costs a limb or a life.
Livestock handling. Specify the species and the handling setup. A farmer working with suckler cows in a poorly designed crush has a very different risk profile from someone with a sheep handling system. Note whether a second person is present during handling, and whether there is a safe exit from the pen.
Working at height. Roof repairs, cleaning out lofts, accessing grain stores. If you or anyone else climbs anything above 2 metres, it goes in here. Note the access method and whether it is inspected.
Slurry and confined spaces. Slurry tanks produce hydrogen sulphide. People die in seconds without warning. The assessment must record where tanks are, whether they are covered, and whether the rule of never working alone near open tanks is enforced. This is not optional detail.
Chemicals and pesticides. List what you store and where. Check that storage is locked, that safety data sheets are available, and that anyone applying pesticides has the required certificate.
Electricity. Note the age of the installation, whether there is an RCD, and whether portable equipment is inspected. Old farmyard wiring is a recurring cause of fires and electrocutions.
Children and visitors. If children live or play on the farm, they need specific mention. Where do they go when machinery is moving? Is the yard separated from play areas? Inspectors look hard at this.
Section 3: Who Might Be Harmed and How
For each hazard, name the people at risk. Employee, family member, contractor, child, visitor. Be specific. A contractor who arrives twice a year to operate a grain auger faces different risks from the full-time worker who uses it every harvest.
The how matters too. Not just hurt by tractor but crushed during hitching because operator could not see around the cab. The more precise this column is, the more useful the document becomes when you are deciding what controls to put in place.
Section 4: Risk Rating
The document uses a simple likelihood-times-severity matrix, typically rated 1 to 5 in each column. Do not game this. A lot of farmers rate everything low because they do not want to face the implication that something on their land is genuinely dangerous. That is understandable, but it defeats the purpose.
If slurry is managed by one person working alone with no second person on site and no emergency plan, the severity is catastrophic and the likelihood is real. Rate it accordingly. High-rated risks are the ones that need your strongest controls.
Section 5: Existing Controls
Write down what is already in place. Guarded PTO shafts, a buddy system for confined space work, safety signs, training records, PPE. If a control is supposed to be in place but is not consistently used, note that honestly. An aspirational control is not a control.
This column is also where you reference procedures. If you have a written procedure for slurry tank management, note it here and make sure it is accessible to anyone who needs it.
Section 6: Additional Controls Required
This is the action plan. If a risk is rated medium or high and the existing controls are not adequate, write down what else needs to happen. Install a PTO guard by a specific date. Fit a cover on the tank. Arrange manual handling training for the new seasonal worker.
Put a date and a responsible person against each action. Without that, nothing gets done. The HSA has seen enough farms where the assessment identified a serious hazard and the additional controls column read "to be arranged" from three years ago.
Section 7: Residual Risk and Sign-Off
After additional controls are applied, re-rate the risk. If you have installed a full slurry tank cover and introduced a two-person rule, the residual risk is lower. Document that.
Sign and date the document. If you have employees, they should sign to confirm they have seen it and understand the hazards relevant to their work. That signature is evidence of communication, which matters if there is ever an incident.
Review
The document is only useful if it stays current. Any significant change on the farm triggers a review: new machinery, new buildings, a new employee, a new enterprise, a near-miss. At minimum, revisit it annually. Write the next review date on the front page before you file it.
A risk assessment that was accurate when it was written and is now two harvests out of date does not protect you legally, and it does not protect anyone physically.
The document exists because farms are genuinely dangerous places, and writing the hazards down is how you start taking them seriously. Do it properly, update it when things change, and make sure the people working the land have actually read it.
