Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals

The Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals is the UK’s regulated professional register of individuals competent to practise Occupational Hygiene and provide you with the necessary advice and expertise to help you protect the health of your workforce.

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What is the Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals?

The Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals is administered by the Faculty of Occupational Hygiene, the Professional Standards Body for the British Occupational Hygiene Profession.

Whether you are employing someone to provide occupational hygiene advice in-house or have employed the services of a company, you need to check that the person giving you advice is competent to do so.

The Register enables you to check an individual’s level of expertise and to see whether they have been independently verified as meeting the requirements outlined in Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. If they are not on the Register, even if they are registered with another professional body, then there has not been an independent check of their training, experience and other attributes. It is your duty to ensure that you have undertaken appropriate due diligence to verify these matters yourself.

What do the different Expertise Levels mean?

The following Levels of Expertise are used within the Register:

Qualified Occupational Hygienist Qualified Occupational Hygienist (Provisional) Occupational Hygiene Technician Associated Professionals LEV Specialist

A Qualified Occupational Hygienist will be able to work unsupervised and provide advice, within their level of experience and competence on the identification, evaluation, measurement, control and impact of a wide range of workplace exposures. This category includes Licentiates and Chartered Members and Fellows of the Faculty of Occupational Hygiene or those of verified equivalent qualifications and status. These registrants are entitled to display the PSA Accredited Registers Quality Mark.

A temporary expertise level during 2024 for those professionals close to obtaining the qualifications required to be classified as a Qualified Occupational Hygienist. A Qualified Occupational Hygienist (Provisional) will be able to work unsupervised and provide advice, within their level of experience and competence on the identification, evaluation, measurement, control and impact of a wide range of workplace exposures. This category includes Associates of the Faculty of Occupational Hygiene who are on the final stages of being able to achieve Licentiate membership. These registrants are entitled to display the PSA Accredited Registers Quality Mark.

An Occupational Hygiene Technician will be able to provide limited occupational hygiene services with supervision, according to their level of experience and qualification. The services may often be in one specific area such as workplace measurement of certain hazards or the maintenance of control measures for workplace hazards, but the individual may not be qualified or experienced to determine how effective control measures are in preventing unlawful exposures or recommending control measures. Individuals in this category may still be undergoing professional qualifications and training. This category includes Associate members of the Faculty of Occupational Hygiene and qualified associates of other recognized professional Occupational Hygiene bodies. These registrants are entitled to display the PSA Accredited Registers Quality Mark.

Other professionals, particularly within the Occupational Health and Safety Professions, who may be appropriately qualified to undertake specific Occupational Hygiene functions.

More information coming soon.

Did you know?

If you have an undertaking that employs or uses workers, then you have a legal duty to ensure that you have access to competent occupational hygiene advice.

Why do I need Occupational Hygiene Services? Why do I need an Occupational Hygiene Professional? What's the difference between Occ Health & Occ Hygiene?

If you run a business in the UK with employees, you have legal duties to protect, as a minimum, the health of your workers. Part of that is to ensure good health risk management which involves the application of Occupational Hygiene practices.

If you do not perform your legal duties in relation to protecting the health of your workers you could be criminally liable and you could impact the health of your workforce. You could also be sued by your workers and have to pay compensation for illness caused at work.

An Occupational Hygiene Professional helps employers protect the health of their workers in their workplace. It is a legal requirement that you have a competent person to help you to protect your workforce from harm to health that might arise from your undertaking.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999

A person shall be regarded as competent for the purposes of paragraphs (1) and (8) of Regulation 7(5) where he has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to enable him properly to assist in undertaking the measures referred to in paragraph (1).

Occupational Hygiene services anticipate, identify and control health hazards in the workplace to ensure the workplace environment does not expose anyone in it to health risks. This is to be differentiated from Occupational Health services which focus on directly supporting the health and wellbeing of workers themselves.

Workplace health duties include the duty to provide a healthy workplace environment (by eliminating or controlling hazards to health), as well as the duty to monitor and support individuals at risk of suffering acute or chronic health effects and/or diseases as a result of their work.

Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals

Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals

What is the Register of Occupational Hygiene Professionals?

What do the different Expertise Levels mean?

Did you know?

Useful Links

FOH Governing Documents