Compliance gap review for a North West business

Client details are withheld at the client’s confidentiality. Sector: commercial business with multiple site users and contractors, North West England.

The situation

The business had a health and safety, risk and supplier policy suite in place and wanted an independent view of where it really stood, alongside support with day-to-day statutory and maintenance duties.

What we did

• Reviewed the full policy suite against how the site actually operates, not just whether documents existed.
• Walked the site on dedicated on-site days, looking at traffic routes, contractor control and statutory records.
• Built a Compliance Gap Register: every gap logged with a priority, an owner, a status and a target date, so nothing depended on memory or email.
• Flagged practical hazards found on site, such as vehicle and pedestrian movements without separation, and drafted policy and layout changes to deal with them.

What the review found

A significant volume of priority remediation work. Documents existed, but several did not match what happened on the ground, and some responsibilities had no clear owner or date. Most findings were ordinary rather than dramatic, which is typical: compliance problems are usually gaps in records, ownership and follow-through.

How it keeps moving

The gap register is the single source of truth. Each visit and monthly report starts from it: what is closed, what is overdue, who owns what. Hours were tracked against the retainer, which showed that the scale of work needed more time than the entry package allowed, and we advised moving to a larger package.

The takeaway

Having policies is not the same as being compliant. An independent review with a live, owned action list shows you where you actually stand and gives you something you can show an insurer, auditor or regulator.

Want to know where your sites stand? See our Compliance Audits (from £495 per site) or our monthly packages.