First Aid Needs Assessment: How to Do One, With a Template You Can Use

Most guides to this stop after listing the eleven factors, which leaves you staring at a blank form. So this one also shows what HSE’s own worked examples concluded for twelve different workplaces — from a seven-person convenience store that needs no first aider at all, to a supermarket that needs three on duty at all times.

Last reviewed: 20 September 2026 against HSE guidance L74 (2024 amendments) and HSE’s first-aid needs assessment case studies.

What is a first aid needs assessment?

It is the exercise of looking at your workplace and working out what “adequate and appropriate” first aid means there. The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require the provision; they do not say how much. The assessment is how HSE expects you to bridge that gap.

It is not the same as your general risk assessment, though it feeds off it. Your risk assessment asks how to stop people being hurt. The needs assessment asks what happens in the minutes after someone is hurt anyway — which is why HSE puts it like this in L74 paragraph 12: information from the risk assessment helps the employer work out first aid needs “if preventive or control measures fail”.

Is it a legal requirement, and does it have to be written down?

The phrase “needs assessment” does not appear in the Regulations. What the law requires is the outcome: equipment, facilities and personnel that are adequate and appropriate. HSE’s guidance is that an assessment is how you get there, and in practice an inspector asking why you have the provision you have is asking to see your assessment.

On writing it down, L74 paragraph 9 is explicit: “There is no requirement for the assessment of first-aid needs to be formal or written down, although it may be useful for employers to retain a written record. By retaining a record of their needs assessment employers can demonstrate to a safety representative or an HSE or local authority inspector how they decided on their level of first-aid provision.”

So: not required, strongly advisable, and it takes about an hour. An unwritten assessment is indistinguishable from no assessment the moment anyone asks.

The eleven factors HSE says to consider

These come from L74 paragraph 10, with what each one typically changes:

Since the January 2024 amendment to L74, HSE has been explicit that the hazards you consider “can be both physical” and “related to mental health”. That does not make mental health first aid training compulsory — we cover what it does and does not require in is mental health first aid a legal requirement — but an assessment that never mentions it now looks incomplete.

How to do one, step by step

1. Start from your risk assessment. List the hazards already identified and, for each, the injury that would need first aid. L74’s Table 2 pairs common hazards with likely injuries: machinery with crush injuries, amputations, fractures, lacerations and eye injuries; work at height with head injury, loss of consciousness and spinal injury; chemicals with poisoning, burns and respiratory problems.
2. Add the illnesses. People fall ill at work whether or not the work caused it. HSE says the assessment should consider that possibility explicitly.
3. Look at who works there. Numbers, shifts, locations, known health conditions, age profile, inexperienced staff and work-experience placements.
4. Read your accident records. Twelve months of the accident book tells you more than any template. If you have had three hand lacerations and a collapse, that is your assessment talking.
5. Map cover against time and space. Walk the rota and the floor plan. For every hour someone is at work, and every place they work, who responds?
6. Decide the three outputs: personnel (appointed person, EFAW, FAW, additional training), equipment (containers, contents, extras, AED, travelling kits) and facilities (first aid room, where things live).
7. Write it down and date it. Use the template below.
8. Diary a review. Annually, and immediately after any change or serious incident.

What HSE’s own case studies decided

HSE publishes twelve worked needs assessments in First-aid needs assessment case studies. They are the closest thing to a model answer that exists, and they are more useful than any blank template because they show the conclusions. HSE’s own caution applies: these “demonstrate the general principles involved but are not definitive”, and employers “should not assume the outcomes shown are directly transferable” to their workplace.

Two things are worth noticing. The convenience store with seven staff needs no trained first aider — HSE says so in its own example, which is a useful counterweight to a sales conversation. And the office with 80 staff needs one per floor, not one per building: layout drives numbers as much as headcount does. For more on how numbers are decided, see how many first aiders does my workplace need.

A worked example, with the reasoning

A print and finishing business in Bolton employs 34 people: 22 in the production hall across two shifts (6am–2pm and 2pm–10pm), 8 in a first-floor office on standard hours, and 4 drivers who are out most of the day. Guillotines, heat presses and pallet trucks are in daily use. The accident book for the last year shows two hand lacerations, a crushed finger and one episode of a visitor fainting in reception.

Working the factors: the hazards are higher than an office (machinery, manual handling, burns from presses), so FAW-level cover is appropriate for production rather than EFAW. The headcount is above 25, so HSE’s guidance expects at least one trained first aider regardless. There are two shifts, so “at least one” means at least one per shift, and with holidays and sickness that means training four so two are always on. The office is on a different floor, and a first aider in the production hall is two minutes and a staircase away, so one EFAW-trained person upstairs is sensible rather than essential. The drivers are alone and mobile: vehicle kits and mobile phones, and one of them EFAW-trained. The visitor faint is the reminder that non-employees walk in, which supports keeping a kit in reception.

Conclusion: four FAW-trained staff (two per shift), one EFAW upstairs, one EFAW among the drivers, four containers (production hall ×2, office, reception), four vehicle kits, no first aid room, review in twelve months. The reasoning is the assessment; the grid below is just where it gets recorded.

The template

This is built on HSE’s own record of first-aid provision (L74 Appendix 1), with the factors added so that the reasoning and the conclusion sit in one document. Copy it into Word or Google Docs, or print it. No email address required, and it is on the page so you can read it before you decide whether it is any use.

Part 1 — The assessment

Part 2 — First aid personnel

Part 3 — Equipment and facilities

Part 4 — Record

Remember the minimum that applies whatever the assessment concludes: a person appointed to take charge of first aid arrangements, a suitably stocked first aid kit, and information for all employees about what to do in an emergency.

Turning the assessment into a decision about training

The difference between the two main courses is set out in First Aid at Work: 1 day or 3 days?, and what the assessment means for equipment is in workplace first aid kit requirements.

When to review it

HSE says to review first aid needs periodically, “particularly after any operating changes”. In practice, review when:

• headcount crosses a threshold — 25 employed is the one HSE names
• you add a shift, a site, a floor or a new process
• a first aider leaves, or a certificate is about to expire
• an incident happens that your provision did not handle well
• your accident records show a pattern you had not planned for
• guidance changes — as it did in 2024

Keeping a first aid incident book makes the next review almost automatic: it tells you what actually happened rather than what you imagined might.

Common mistakes

What this guide does not cover

Early years and school settings have separate requirements from the Department for Education alongside the workplace Regulations, and those are changing — we will cover them separately rather than summarise them here. Offshore work, diving, mines and vessels are outside these Regulations. This guide is written for Great Britain; Northern Ireland has equivalent but separate regulations.

If you would rather not do it alone

We have been doing workplace first aid needs assessments across Greater Manchester and the North West since 1996, and we will talk one through with you without charge — including when the honest answer is that you need less training than you expected. Our first aid at work courses run as open course places for individuals and as group training at your premises for up to 12 people.

Deals

First Aid at Work Courses

Frequently asked questions

Is a first aid needs assessment a legal requirement?

Not by name. The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require first aid provision that is adequate and appropriate; HSE’s guidance is that a needs assessment is how you decide what that means. In practice it is the evidence that your provision was a decision, so treat it as required.

Does the assessment have to be written down?

No. L74 paragraph 9 says there is no requirement for it to be formal or written, but that a record lets you demonstrate to a safety representative or an inspector how you decided your level of provision. Writing it down costs an hour and is the only version anyone else can see.

Who should carry out the first aid needs assessment?

Whoever knows the workplace. HSE notes that employers are well placed to judge hazard and risk because they are familiar with the exact circumstances. Where an occupational health service is available, employers may delegate it to them.

How often should a first aid needs assessment be reviewed?

HSE says periodically, and particularly after any operating changes. Annually is a sensible default, brought forward by a new site, a new shift pattern, a change in headcount, a first aider leaving, or an incident your provision handled badly.

Do I have to include visitors and customers in the assessment?

There is no legal duty to provide first aid for non-employees, but HSE strongly recommends including them and making provision for them. Where you do, check that your liability insurance covers what your first aiders might do for them.

What is the difference between a risk assessment and a first aid needs assessment?

A risk assessment identifies hazards and how to control them. A first aid needs assessment decides what you provide for when someone is hurt or falls ill anyway. The first feeds the second: the injuries your hazards could cause tell you what your first aiders and kit need to handle.

Does a small office really need to do one?

Yes, and it will be short. The Regulations apply to every employer, including those with fewer than five employees. The outcome may well be an appointed person, a kit and a notice — which is a perfectly respectable result, recorded on one page.

Should the assessment cover mental health?

HSE’s guidance was amended in January 2024 to say that hazards and risks can be both physical and related to mental health, and that it may be helpful to have people trained to recognise and support mental ill health. It is a consideration to record, not a training requirement.

Can I use a first aid needs assessment template I found online?

Use one for the structure, not the answers. The eleven factors are the same everywhere; the findings are specific to your hazards, rota, layout and accident history. An assessment that could describe any business demonstrates nothing.

What do I do with the assessment once it is finished?

Keep it with your health and safety file, act on it (book the training, buy the equipment), tell employees what the arrangements are, and diary the review date. HSE also recommends keeping a record of first aiders and their certificate dates so requalification is booked before expiry.

Sources

• HSE, First aid at work: Guidance on Regulations, L74, third edition 2013, reissued with amendments 2015, 2018 and 2024 — paragraphs 9, 10, 12–30, Table 1, Table 2 and Appendix 1
• HSE, First-aid needs assessment case studies, casestudy9(rev1)
• HSE, Assess your first aid needs
• HSE, First aid – are you an employer?

The template above adapts HSE’s record of first-aid provision, which is Crown copyright and reproduced under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

For the wider picture — what the law requires, how many first aiders, which course and what changed in 2024 — see our guide to workplace first aid requirements. Questions about your own assessment? Call 0845 838 4643 or use the enquiry form on this page.