Inspectors do not ask whether you have thought about explosion risk. They ask for specific documents, in a specific order. If the file exists, the visit is short.
The Health and Safety Executive enforces DSEAR on most industrial and manufacturing sites. Local authority environmental health officers enforce it in premises they cover — retail, warehousing, hospitality, garages. Pembrokeshire County Council is also the Petroleum Enforcement Authority for forecourts and petrol storage. Fire and rescue services take an interest where the fire risk assessment and DSEAR overlap. All of them ask for broadly the same file.
Three things, in this order. First, on a site that needs zones, there is an assessment but no zoning drawing — the classification exists as a paragraph rather than a plan, and the inspector cannot see where the zones are. Second, there is a zoning drawing but nobody has checked that the equipment inside the zones is suitable, so the forklift charger or the extractor fan in a Zone 2 has no Ex rating. Third, the action plan has high-priority items from three years ago with no status. None of those is difficult to fix in advance; all of them are awkward to fix during a visit.
Our assessments are written as the file the inspector wants: assessment, zoning sketch where zones are needed, equipment schedule, basis of safety where relevant, and action plan, with a one-page summary at the front. If you already have an assessment and want it checked against this list before an inspection, that is a short piece of work and we will tell you plainly what is missing.
Related: Hazardous area classification · What an assessment looks like · DSEAR for tenders and PQQs · New plant and installations
HSE's inspection programme is risk-based and targets sectors with known explosion risk — coatings, woodworking dust, fuel handling, fabrication. Local authority officers cover retail, hospitality and warehousing. Any inspector who sees dangerous substances on site can ask for the assessment.
Regulation 7 requires places where explosive atmospheres may occur in quantities requiring special precautions to be classified into zones and, where necessary, marked. Where there are such places, a drawing or sketch is the accepted way of showing that classification; a paragraph of text is not enough for an inspector to check equipment against.
Typically an improvement notice with a deadline to produce a suitable and sufficient assessment. Where the risk is immediate, a prohibition notice on the activity. Prosecution follows failure to comply.
Yes. We check it against the document list above and tell you what is missing or out of date. Sometimes that is a short update; sometimes the honest answer is that it needs redoing, and we will say so before starting.
No charge for the conversation. Most quotes go out the same day.