What law governs first aid in the workplace?
Workplace first aid in Great Britain sits under the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981. The regulations were made on 29 June 1981, came into operation on 1 July 1982, and were last amended on 1 October 2015.
The core duty is Regulation 3. It says an employer "shall provide, or ensure that there are provided, such equipment and facilities as are adequate and appropriate in the circumstances for enabling first-aid to be rendered to his employees if they are injured or become ill at work." That covers both kit and people.
What counts as "adequate and appropriate" isn't a fixed list in the regulations. It depends on your workplace, which is why the assessment described below does the heavy lifting. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the regulator that publishes guidance on how to meet this duty. If you employ anyone, the regulations apply to you, including small businesses and sites with a handful of staff.
What is a first-aider and how long is the certificate valid?
A first-aider is someone who has done training appropriate to the circumstances and holds a valid certificate of competence. The HSE recognises two main qualifications: First Aid at Work (FAW) and Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW). EFAW is the shorter, one-day qualification covering emergencies; FAW is the fuller course for higher-risk settings.
Both certificates are valid for three years. After three years the certificate expires and the holder must requalify to stay a first-aider. There's no grace period baked into the law, so once the date passes, that person no longer counts toward your provision.
The practical consequence is a planning one. A three-year clock is long enough to forget. If you have several first-aiders trained in the same week, their certificates also expire in the same week three years later, and a single missed booking can leave a whole site short. Tracking expiry dates and booking requalification ahead of the deadline is the fix.
| Qualification | Typical use | Validity | After expiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Aid at Work (FAW) | Higher-risk workplaces | 3 years | Requalify to remain a first-aider |
| Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) | Lower-risk workplaces, emergency cover | 3 years | Requalify to remain a first-aider |
Is annual refresher training a legal requirement?
No. The HSE strongly recommends that first-aiders do annual refresher training to keep their skills current, but it isn't a legal requirement, and it doesn't extend or replace the three-year certificate.
It's worth being precise here because the two things get muddled. Refresher training is a short top-up between qualifications, aimed at stopping skills fading over three years. Requalification is the full course you must complete before the certificate expires if the person is to remain a qualified first-aider. The annual refresher is advisory. The three-year requalification is the hard deadline tied to certificate validity.
My view, grounded in the HSE's own wording that the refresher is "strongly recommended": treat the annual refresher as a genuine commitment even though it isn't compulsory. Skills do decay, and a first-aider who last practised CPR three years ago is a weaker safety net than one who topped up last spring. The law sets the floor, not the ceiling, and the refresher is cheap insurance against that decay.
How many first-aiders do you need?
There's no legally fixed number. The HSE is explicit: "There are no hard and fast rules on exact numbers, and you will need to take into account all the relevant circumstances of your particular workplace." Numbers follow your needs assessment, not a formula.
That assessment weighs your workplace hazards and risks, the size of the organisation, and other relevant factors, to decide what first-aid equipment, facilities and personnel you should provide. A low-risk office reaches a different answer from a workshop with heavy machinery, even at the same headcount.
The legal minimum, whatever your assessment says, is a baseline. You must have a suitably stocked first-aid kit, an appointed person to take charge of first-aid arrangements, and information for all employees on those arrangements. An appointed person looks after the kit and calls the emergency services; they don't need formal first-aid training. Above that floor, whether you need trained FAW or EFAW first-aiders, and how many, is the assessment's job.
Worked example, hypothetical: a care home with 40 staff across day and night shifts can't cover those hours with one first-aider, so its assessment would point to several, spread across shifts, rather than a single token holder.
What happens when a certificate expires?
Once a FAW or EFAW certificate passes its three-year expiry date, the holder stops counting as a qualified first-aider. If your needs assessment relied on that person, your provision now falls below what you assessed as necessary, and you're no longer meeting the duty under Regulation 3 in the way you planned.
The honest caveat: an expired certificate doesn't automatically mean a fine landed on your desk. The HSE doesn't issue a fixed penalty the moment a date passes, and there's no licence-style points system for first aid. Enforcement turns on the wider picture, usually surfacing after an incident or an inspection, where inadequate first-aid provision becomes one finding among others.
That's exactly why expiry is easy to neglect, and exactly why you shouldn't. The risk isn't a tidy automatic penalty; it's an injured employee with no qualified help and a provision gap you can't explain. Booking requalification before the three-year mark, rather than after, keeps the cover continuous and the paperwork clean.