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Setting up a business involves complying with a range of legal requirements. Find out which ones apply to you and your new enterprise.
What particular regulations do specific types of business (such as a hotel, or a printer, or a taxi firm) need to follow? We explain some of the key legal issues to consider for 200 types of business.
While poor governance can bring serious legal consequences, the law can also protect business owners and managers and help to prevent conflict.
Whether you want to raise finance, join forces with someone else, buy or sell a business, it pays to be aware of the legal implications.
From pay, hours and time off to discipline, grievance and hiring and firing employees, find out about your legal responsibilities as an employer.
Marketing matters. Marketing drives sales for businesses of all sizes by ensuring that customers think of their brand when they want to buy.
Commercial disputes can prove time-consuming, stressful and expensive, but having robust legal agreements can help to prevent them from occurring.
Whether your business owns or rents premises, your legal liabilities can be substantial. Commercial property law is complex, but you can avoid common pitfalls.
With information and sound advice, living up to your legal responsibilities to safeguard your employees, customers and visitors need not be difficult or costly.
As information technology continues to evolve, legislation must also change. It affects everything from data protection and online selling to internet policies for employees.
Intellectual property (IP) isn't solely relevant to larger businesses or those involved in developing innovative new products: all products have IP.
Knowing how and when you plan to sell or relinquish control of your business can help you to make better decisions and achieve the best possible outcome.
From bereavement, wills, inheritance, separation and divorce to selling a house, personal injury and traffic offences, learn more about your personal legal rights.
Carrying out a health and safety risk assessment is the most critical part of managing health and safety. The risk assessment helps you identify - and control - the main health and safety risks in your business.
Unless you are genuinely self-employed and your work poses no risks to others, your business must carry out a suitable health and safety risk assessment. You must keep a written record of your risk assessment, unless you employ fewer than five people.
For most businesses, a health and safety risk assessment is relatively straightforward. However, you may need external help for any specific hazards that need special expertise to evaluate and control.
Every business also needs to carry out a fire risk assessment. It makes sense to combine this with your health and safety risk assessment. You’ll need to review the risk assessments periodically or when circumstances change.
Identifying hazards is the first step in carrying out a health and safety risk assessment. Look around your premises, ask employees and suppliers, and check records of any health and safety incidents. Typical hazards include potential causes of accidents (such as trailing wires) or long-term health problems (such as poorly-designed workstations) as well as obvious hazards such as machinery, dangerous substances and so on.
At the same time, you need to consider who could be affected by the hazard. Bear in mind the extra risks to people who are not familiar with your premises or are particularly vulnerable.
In each case, evaluate the scale of the risk and how effective any existing precautions are. As a minimum, you should be complying with any specific health and safety regulations and meeting industry norms.
It may be possible to eliminate hazards altogether for example, by replacing dangerous machinery with an alternative.
Remaining health and safety risks can often be controlled with appropriate health and safety procedures, backed up by training. You may also be able to reduce health and safety risks by preventing or minimising employees’ exposure to hazards: for example, by using guard rails to prevent falls from height, or by ensuring hazardous substances are stored securely. Health and safety risks can be further reduced through the use of personal protective equipment such as protective clothing and headgear.
You must reduce health and safety risks to acceptable levels. But you can take into account factors such as cost in deciding what steps are reasonably practicable, bearing in mind the scale of the health and safety risks involved.
The Health & Safety Executie (HSE) website has further guidance on carrying out a health and safety risk assessment and how to control risk in the workplace.