UK First Aid Kit Requirements for Employers: What to Stock and Record
Published · gribit
Under The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981, employers must provide first aid equipment, facilities and personnel that are “adequate and appropriate” for their workplace. In practice, that means carrying out a first aid needs assessment, stocking a kit that meets at least the HSE baseline (or one built to British Standard BS 8599-1), and keeping a written record of what you decided and why.
TL;DR:
- A written assessment should cover hazards, shift staffing, remote workers, emergency access, accident history, and backup cover, then be reviewed after material changes.
- HSE’s low risk baseline contains seven core item categories, and employers should exclude medicines; eye wash or burn dressings may be needed for specific hazards.
- The recognized British workplace kit standard is voluntary; kit size depends on risk and headcount, while remote sites or high hazards may need extra coverage.
- Inspect kits on a set schedule and after use, record checks, replacements, training, and certificate expiry dates, and tell all staff where equipment is kept.
Table of Contents
- What the law requires and how to carry out a first aid needs assessment
- Suggested minimum kit contents and how BS 8599-1 fits in
- Kit size, number of kits and first aider provision
- Maintenance, location, recordkeeping and common compliance failures
- Practical compliance help: how digital logbooks simplify first aid kit checks
- What actually matters in first aid compliance
- Gribit: a simple way to keep first aid kit checks on schedule
- FAQ
- Sources
What the law requires and how to carry out a first aid needs assessment
The Regulations don’t hand you a fixed list of contents. Instead, they set a test: your provision must be “adequate and appropriate” given the work you do, the people you employ and the risks involved under The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981. That’s deliberately flexible, but it also means you need to show your reasoning rather than just pointing at a kit on the wall.
A first aid needs assessment is how you get there. Work through these questions and write down your answers:
- What type of work do you do, and what hazards does it involve?
- How many employees do you have, and how are they distributed across shifts?
- Do you have remote, lone or travelling workers who won’t be near a stocked kit?
- How close are you to the nearest emergency services?
- What does your accident history tell you about recurring risks?
- What happens if your trained first aider or appointed person is absent or on leave?
Review the assessment whenever something material changes: a new process, a change in headcount, a new site or a pattern of near misses. HSE guidance on assessing needs treats the kit as a living resource rather than a one-off purchase, and a documented, dated assessment is usually the first thing an inspector asks to see.
HSE advises employers to inform employees about the first-aid arrangements, including where equipment, facilities and trained personnel are. A kit nobody knows exists is not adequate provision, whatever it contains.
Suggested minimum kit contents and how BS 8599-1 fits in
For a low risk workplace, such as a typical shop or office, HSE’s guidance on first aid kit contents suggests a minimum that covers:
- A leaflet giving general guidance on first aid.
- Individually wrapped sterile plasters in assorted sizes.
- Sterile eye pads.
- Triangular bandages, ideally individually wrapped.
- Safety pins.
- Large and medium sized individually wrapped sterile unmedicated wound dressings.
- Disposable gloves.
HSE’s suggested minimum kit for low risk workplaces runs to seven core items, which gives you a floor to assess against rather than a ceiling to stop at. HSE also recommends against keeping medicines, including painkillers, in the first aid box: staff shouldn’t be dispensing tablets, and allergies or contraindications make this a liability rather than a help.
This is where BS 8599-1 becomes useful. The standard specifies ready-made kit sizes and contents matched to workplace risk categories, container requirements, and guidance on where to place an automated external defibrillator. The standard also provides guidance on workplace first-aid kits and AED placement. BS 8599-1 is a recognised specification, not a legal requirement: you can meet the Regulations without buying a kit certified to it, but it’s a practical shortcut to demonstrating adequacy, especially once your needs assessment flags anything beyond basic cuts and bruises.
Some hazards call for additions beyond either baseline. Eye irrigation solution matters where mains water isn’t readily available, and specialised burns dressings are worth adding where chemicals or high heat are part of the job. The needs assessment is what tells you which of these apply.
Kit size, number of kits and first aider provision
BS 8599-1 doesn’t ask you to guess kit sizes. It sets out small, medium and large kits matched to your risk category (low, medium or high) and your headcount, using tables rather than a flat rule of thumb. An office and a warehouse may need different kits, even if they have the same headcount.
The Regulations themselves don’t specify a fixed ratio of first aiders to staff. Instead, they ask you to appoint someone suitable to take charge of first aid arrangements, sized to your risk and workforce. When deciding on numbers, account for:
- Shift patterns and whether cover exists on every shift, not just during office hours.
- Annual leave, sickness and training schedules that could leave you without a trained person on a given day.
- Lone workers or satellite sites that a single central kit won’t reach.
A few triggers usually mean one kit and one appointed person isn’t enough: multiple buildings or floors, remote or offshore locations, high hazard activities like working at height or with machinery, or a headcount large enough that a single first aider becomes a bottleneck. Any of these point towards additional kits, a dedicated first aid room, or more trained first aiders.
Maintenance, location, recordkeeping and common compliance failures
A kit is only adequate on the day it’s checked. Build a simple maintenance routine: inspect contents against expiry dates on a set schedule, and check again immediately after any kit is used. Frequency should track how fast items are used and how often your workforce turns over, since new starters won’t know what’s already missing.
Keep kits in a clearly labelled, accessible location, and make sure every member of staff, not just the appointed person, knows where to find one. HSE’s guidance for employers is explicit that employees must be informed of these arrangements, not left to find out during an emergency.
Recordkeeping is what turns good practice into evidence. Keep your written needs assessment, a log of checks and replacements, and records of who’s trained and when their certificate expires. These are the documents an inspector will ask for first.
Pro Tip: Date every inspection entry with the name of who carried it out, even for a quick visual check, it’s the easiest evidence to produce and the easiest to forget.
The most common failures are mundane: no documented assessment, plasters and dressings past their expiry date, and staff who simply don’t know where the kit lives.
Practical compliance help: how digital logbooks simplify first aid kit checks
Most first aid failures aren’t about ignorance of the rules, they’re about a check that quietly stopped happening. Automated reminders close that gap by flagging a kit before an item expires rather than after an inspector finds it empty.
- A digital audit trail records who checked the kit, what was replaced, and when, turning routine maintenance into evidence.
- Certificates, receipts and training records attached to each check mean your documented needs assessment and your maintenance history sit in one place rather than a drawer of paper.
- Scheduling across multiple sites or kits removes the guesswork of which location is overdue.
Gribit works as a per-site digital logbook built for exactly this: scheduling checks, recording outcomes and storing the supporting documents that back them up, without claiming to replace your own judgement on what your workplace needs.
What actually matters in first aid compliance
The contents list gets most of the attention, but it’s rarely what trips employers up. The needs assessment is the part that’s skipped, underwritten or never revisited, and it’s also the part inspectors care about most, because it shows you thought about your own workplace rather than copying a generic list.
Facilities teams working across mixed sites often juggle several overlapping safety regimes at once. A useful comparison is fire risk assessment in residential blocks, where guidance on assessment types for UK flats makes a similar point: the document proving you assessed the risk matters as much as the equipment itself.
My honest view is that BS 8599-1 kits are a good default precisely because they remove a decision that many managers get wrong: guessing at sizes. But buying the right kit and then never checking it again is worse than a smaller kit that’s actually maintained. If you do one thing after reading this, make it the written assessment, dated and reviewed, not another trip to the stationery cupboard.
— Jon
Gribit: a simple way to keep first aid kit checks on schedule
Keeping a first aid kit compliant isn’t complicated, but it’s easy to let slip between everything else on a manager’s plate: the expiry check that gets pushed back a week, the certificate that’s saved on someone’s phone and never found again.
Our SITE LOGBOOK ANNUAL PLAN gives each site its own digital logbook for £49 per year, built to handle exactly this kind of recurring check.
- We schedule first aid kit inspections alongside other recurring checks like fire alarm tests, so nothing relies on memory.
- We record the outcome of each check and flag follow-up actions when something needs replacing.
- We store certificates and supporting documents centrally, so they’re there when an inspector asks.
If your current system is a paper logbook or a spreadsheet nobody updates, see the SITE LOGBOOK ANNUAL PLAN and set up your first site today.
This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer. Consult a qualified legal professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.
FAQ
Is it a legal requirement to have a first aid room?
No single rule forces every workplace to have a dedicated first aid room. The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require “adequate and appropriate” provision, and your needs assessment can help determine whether a first aid room is appropriate for your workplace.
Is it cheaper to buy a first aid kit or make your own?
Cost depends on what your needs assessment requires rather than which route you choose. A pre-assembled kit built to BS 8599-1 often works out simpler than sourcing items individually, since it’s already sized to a recognised risk category.
What are 20 items typically found in a first aid kit?
There’s no fixed item list in UK guidance; HSE’s suggested minimum for low risk workplaces covers seven core categories, including plasters, eye pads, triangular bandages, safety pins, wound dressings and gloves. Larger or higher risk kits built to BS 8599-1 add more items within these same categories, such as additional dressing sizes and specialist supplies.
Do I need a class A or class B first aid kit?
UK guidance doesn’t use “class A” or “class B” labelling; that terminology belongs to other countries’ standards. In the UK, kit choice follows HSE’s baseline contents for low risk work or BS 8599-1’s small, medium and large kit sizes matched to your assessed risk category.