Although there are numerous references in UK health and safety regulations to competent persons and/or competence, there is no simple, comprehensive or prescriptive definition of what is required.
The Management Of Health And Safety At Work Regulations 1999(MHSWR) state that a person is competent:
‘Where he has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and
other qualities to enable him properly to do the task in question’.
By comparison, the NVQ definition of competence is:
‘The ability to apply knowledge, understanding, practical and thinking skills to achieve effective performance to the standards required in employment. This involves solving problems and being sufficiently flexible to meet changing demands.’
In practice, it is often the courts that decide, retrospectively, whether a person is competent. This does not help a business manager to determine the qualities needed in a ‘competent person’.