Health & Safety for companies in Serviced Offices, Business Centres and Managed Workspace

When taking serviced office space, one thing you need to check is that your operator has proper Health & Safety procedures in place.

As people who exercise control over premises but who are not employers, serviced office operators have certain legal duties placed upon them. For example, as a minimum, they have to ensure that common parts, common services and the means of access to, and egress from the workplace (the way in and the way out), are safe and without risk to health.

However, as an employer yourself, and as a tenant with control over certain areas of the Business Centre, you also have some health & safety responsibilities. If the premises contain only one employer, then responsibility is easy to determine. Where there is more than one employer, as in Business Centres, regulations state that employers must co-operate with each other over health & safety issues.

Taking proper care: Let's assume that you occupy part of a two-storey building with a cooling tower, air conditioning and a lift. You will want to know that the cooling tower is registered with the local authority, that regular legionella checks are carried out and that the lift is effectively maintained. Of course, our two-storey building will have far more issues than those mentioned above. You will have emergency exit routes, fire bells and fire fighting equipment, lighting, flooring, cleaning and so on.

Take window cleaning as an example. Your contract may state that the centre will ensure that the windows are kept clean. What does this mean? Once a year, once a quarter, or once a week? Does it state that the windows will be cleaned inside as well as out? If the window cleaner is responsible for the inside, you need to be aware that, even though it is a contract agreed with the centre, you and your staff will have a direct affect on how safely the window cleaner can operate. In other words, you become legally responsible for an area of activity directly controlled by contract between your landlord and a contract cleaner.

Your Business Centre should conduct a regular risk assessment, and this document should be made available to you. Generally, small Business Centres might conduct assessments every two years, larger centres or Managed Workspace should conduct annual assessments. A risk assessment looks at every part of the building and services in order to assess what risks might be posed to health & safety, and whether all possible steps have been taken to avoid any incident.

One major question is: who is the health and safety competent person or authority for the building? If you do not employ your own health and safety advisor, who ensures that the above is effectively managed? The serviced office operator may employ the services of a facilities and/or health and safety specialist. If so, you need to understand whether their level of competence is acceptable. You will also wish to feel comfortable that the provider of these services is truly independent.

Before you move into a Business Centre - what questions do you ask to ensure a good health & safety policy is in place? Start with the following:

• Do they have a health and safety policy and procedures?
• Do they conduct regular fire evacuations/tests?
• Is the fire fighting equipment/signage well maintained?
• What steps are taken to oversee transport/pedestrian access and roadways etc?
• How does the centre control their contractors?
• Which contractors do they use? Will they provide copies of their health and safety documentation?
• Has the landlord/owner conducted a premises wide risk assessment?
• How detailed is the contract documentation? Are responsibilities open to question?
• Does the landlord/owner employ someone with a level of health and safety competence?
• Does the building have one or more lifts? Air conditioning? A cooling tower? Will the landlord/owner provide copies of appropriate documentation such as copies of maintenance programmes and test certification?

This may appear to be endless, but if the landlord/owner is not prepared to deal with these issues seriously it will tell you something about the sort of relationship that might exist once you have taken up tenancy. There are explicit and implicit duties on landlords to provide relevant information relating to health & safety to persons who are not employees. If necessary you can use legal provisions to get the information you need from your Business Centre, but hopefully it won't be necessary. Precisely how you determine what sort of information is necessary and what is superfluous is a matter for you. Anything that could be seen, in any way, to affect the health and safety of others should be made available, and this would certainly include information answering any of the questions outlined above.