You’ve got a first aider. Maybe two. The certificates are up on the wall. Job done, right?
Not quite. The question isn’t whether you have any first aiders at all — it’s whether you have enough of them, trained to the right level, available at the right times. And when you start adding up holidays, sick days, shift patterns, people working from home, and the member of staff who left last month and hasn’t been replaced on the fire log, the honest answer for a lot of UK businesses is: probably not.
Here’s what the law actually asks of you, how many first aiders HSE guidance says you should have, and — the bit most businesses miss — whether your current cover genuinely holds up on a normal Tuesday.
What HSE guidance actually says
The HSE sets out everything you need to know in its official guidance document, L74: First Aid at Work. It’s the document inspectors use, insurers refer to, and tribunals cite — which makes it the one worth paying attention to.
The headline message is simple. UK law doesn’t give you a set ratio. It doesn’t say “one first aider per hundred staff” or anything similar. What it does say is that you need to provide first aid cover that’s adequate and appropriate for your workplace — and that you work out what adequate means by looking at a few straightforward factors: the kind of hazards you have, how many people are on site at once, how spread out they are, and how work patterns affect who’s around when.
What the HSE then gives you is a set of suggested numbers to use as a starting point. These aren’t legally binding figures, but they’re what an inspector will measure you against and what a court will look at if things go wrong.
The suggested numbers for your workplace
Here are the indicative numbers from HSE guidance. Find the row that most closely matches your workplace to see the suggested minimum cover:
Workplace risk level | Number of employees | Suggested minimum first-aid personnel |
Low risk (offices, shops, libraries) | Fewer than 25 | At least one appointed person |
Low risk | 25–50 | At least one EFAW-trained first aider |
Low risk | More than 50 | At least one FAW-trained first aider for every 100 employed |
Higher risk (light engineering, warehousing, food processing, work with machinery or sharp instruments) | Fewer than 5 | At least one appointed person |
Higher risk | 5–50 | At least one EFAW or FAW first aider depending on hazards |
Higher risk | More than 50 | At least one FAW-trained first aider for every 50 employed |
Explanation of the terms:
Appointed person: not a trained first aider, but someone named to take charge of first aid arrangements and call an ambulance when needed.
EFAW (Emergency First Aid at Work): a one-day course covering the basics: unconsciousness, choking, bleeding, shock, minor injuries. Fine for most low-risk workplaces.
FAW (First Aid at Work):a three-day course covering a much wider range of injuries and conditions. Needed for higher-risk workplaces or any situation where serious injuries are a realistic possibility.
Both qualifications last three years. After that, your first aiders need to retake the full course — and the HSE strongly recommends an annual refresher in between to keep skills sharp.
Do you have enough trained first aiders?
Where cover gaps really open up
Having the right number of first aiders on your payroll isn’t the same as having first aid cover available when something happens. This is where most businesses have gaps they haven’t spotted — and it’s the single most important area to get right.
Holiday and sick cover
If your workplace meets the HSE’s suggested numbers with exactly the minimum first aiders, you only meet them when all of them are at work. The moment one books a week off, or comes down with the flu, or is away on a training day, you’re under-covered. Over the course of a year, that’s not a rare event — it’s most of the year.
The practical fix: train more first aiders than the minimum. For most businesses, that means two or three times the suggested figure. It sounds like a lot, but spread across a workforce it isn’t — and it’s the only way to make sure cover is genuinely always available.
Shift patterns and out-of-hours working
First aid cover has to be available at all times people are at work. A single first aider on a nine-to-five rota doesn’t cover the early shift, the late shift, the weekend opening, or the reception desk that stays staffed until 7pm after the office empties out.
The simple test: look at every pattern of attendance in your workplace — every shift, every late opening, every weekend duty, every lone-working arrangement. For each one, ask whether a trained first aider is physically present. If the answer is anything other than yes, you’ve found a gap.
Hybrid and home working
Hybrid working has quietly reduced first aid cover in many workplaces without anyone noticing. If your three first aiders now all work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays, your office has no first aid cover on those days. That’s a problem whether you’re running at full occupancy or not — if someone’s there, they need cover.
Reviewing which days your first aiders are typically in the office, and making sure cover is spread across the week, is one of the easiest wins in this whole area.
Spread across the site
A single first aider on the ground floor of a four-storey building isn’t equivalent to one per floor. The same applies to multi-building sites, basements, warehouses, outbuildings, and anywhere physically separated from the main workspace. The question to ask is: from any location where someone might need help, how long would it take a first aider to reach them? If the answer is more than a few minutes, your distribution isn’t right.
Staff turnover
The gap we see most often. A first aider leaves the business, their certificate stays on the fire log for months because no one updated it, and the business carries on thinking it’s covered when it isn’t. Reviewing the first aid list every time someone leaves — and training a replacement promptly — is the fix.
Is your first aid training up to date?
EFAW or FAW: which level does your team need?
The two HSE-recognised first aid qualifications are Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) and First Aid at Work (FAW). The difference matters, because training people to the wrong level can leave you under-covered without you realising.
EFAW is a one-day course. It covers the fundamentals — unconsciousness, choking, bleeding, shock, minor injuries — and is suitable for most lower-risk workplaces like offices, shops and professional services firms.
FAW is a three-day course. It covers a much wider range: fractures, head and spinal injuries, chest injuries, poisoning, and more complex scenarios. It’s the right choice for higher-risk workplaces — anywhere involving machinery, chemicals, physical work, or where the risk of serious injury is more than theoretical. If your workplace falls into that category, EFAW on its own isn’t enough, and the HSE guidance is clear about it.
A lot of businesses default to EFAW because it’s cheaper and quicker. If your workplace genuinely is low-risk, that’s fine. If it isn’t, you’re under-trained — and that’s the kind of gap that only shows up when it’s already too late.
The needs assessment: your documented reasoning
Once you’ve worked out roughly what cover you need, the final step is writing it down. The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require every employer to carry out a first aid needs assessment — a short document that records what you looked at, what you decided, and why.
The assessment doesn’t need to be complicated. It should cover the hazards in your workplace, how many people are on site at any one time, your work patterns, how spread out your workforce is, your accident history, any lone or remote workers, and — since the 2024 update to HSE guidance — any mental health considerations alongside physical first aid.
The point of the assessment isn’t the paperwork for its own sake. It’s the evidence that your first aid arrangements are a considered, proportionate response to your actual workplace — not a guess. If an HSE inspector asks why you have three first aiders and not six, your needs assessment is the answer. If you can’t show one, you’ve no defensible basis for the number of first aiders you have in place. If you want help putting one together, our risk assessment service covers this alongside the broader workplace risk picture.
Mental health first aid — the piece most workplaces still haven’t caught up with
The 2024 update to HSE guidance explicitly asks employers to think about mental health alongside physical first aid in the needs assessment. This isn’t a legal requirement to appoint Mental Health First Aiders — but it is a strong prompt to think about how your workplace responds when someone is in distress, having a mental health crisis, or affected by a traumatic incident at work.
For many workplaces, the right response is a mix of trained Mental Health First Aiders, clear escalation routes to professional support, and manager training so no one’s left guessing what to do. The point is that someone’s mental health crisis can happen on a Tuesday morning in the office, same as a physical injury, and your first aid arrangements should cover both.
Need first aid training for your team?
Here’s the honest ambition: on any day, in any location where people are working, at any time of day they’re working, someone with the right training should be there to help if they’re needed. That’s what adequate first aid cover actually looks like — not a certificate on the wall from three years ago.
At Office Test, we run both HSE-recognised first aid courses — Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) and First Aid at Work (FAW) — plus annual refresher training. Courses can be delivered at our training centre or on-site at your premises, with scheduled dates throughout the year that your team can book onto directly.
Whether you need one person trained or a whole workforce, whether you’re topping up for holiday cover or starting from scratch, we can get you to the right level of trained first aid cover.
“On the First Aid at Work course, our trainer Christine was fabulous: thorough, patient, and she kept testing you until it clicked. She made sure you actually knew what you were doing, and made it genuinely engaging, not a chore.”
Martina Ivanetic
Venue Manager, ActOne Cinema
Need first aid training for your team?
