Young Workers and Apprentices on Site — Your Health and Safety Duties (2026)

The Legal Definitions: Young Person vs Child

The law draws a line at two ages, and the duties change depending on which side of the line your worker sits.

• Young person: anyone under 18.
• Child: anyone below the minimum school leaving age (MSLA). In practice this is the end of the school year in which they turn 16. A 16-year-old who has finished compulsory schooling is a young person but is no longer a child.

Most apprentices and trainees in the construction and trade sectors are young persons aged 16 or 17. You will occasionally take on someone below MSLA for work experience or a pre-16 placement, and those cases carry the additional duties for children — most importantly, the duty to inform a parent or guardian (covered below).

Why Young Workers Are Higher Risk

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the regulations recognise that young people are not simply smaller adults. The law expects you to account for the specific reasons they are more vulnerable on site:

• Lack of experience: they have not seen things go wrong, so they don't anticipate hazards the way a seasoned tradesperson does.
• Lack of awareness of risk: a young worker may not recognise a situation as dangerous until it is too late, and may not know what questions to ask.
• Physical and psychological immaturity: they may not yet have the strength, coordination, stamina or judgement that a task demands, and may be more easily distracted or influenced by peer pressure.

These three factors — inexperience, immaturity and lack of awareness — are written directly into the regulations, and they are the lens through which you must assess every task a young person does.

Your Core Duty: A Risk Assessment Before They Start

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, you must carry out — or review an existing — risk assessment before a young person starts work. This is not a tick-box repeat of your general site assessment. It must specifically take account of their inexperience, immaturity and lack of awareness of risks.

In practical terms, your young person risk assessment should consider the layout of the site, the equipment and machinery they will be exposed to, the physical, biological and chemical agents present, the work activities and processes involved, and the extent of the supervision and training you will provide. The point is to identify where a young person faces a greater risk than an experienced adult would, and to put extra controls in place.

Crucially, the assessment must be done before they pick up a single tool — not after their first week. If you take on a worker mid-job and the conditions change, you review it again. Keep it written down: if anything goes wrong, the assessment is the first thing an HSE inspector will ask to see.

Prohibited and Restricted Work for Under-18s

The regulations restrict certain work for young persons where the risk cannot be adequately controlled. You must not let a young person do work that is:

• Beyond their physical or psychological capacity
• Exposing them to harmful agents — toxic, carcinogenic, or otherwise damaging to health (for example certain dusts, solvents, lead or asbestos-related work)
• Exposing them to radiation
• Involving a risk of accidents they are unlikely to recognise because of their inexperience or lack of attention to safety
• Involving a risk to health from extreme cold, heat, noise or vibration
• Involving certain dangerous machinery or processes

This is where many employers misunderstand the rule. The restriction is not an absolute ban. A young person can do this kind of work where it is necessary for their training, where they are properly supervised by a competent person, and where the risks are reduced so far as is reasonably practicable. An apprentice plasterer can learn to use a mixer or work at height — under supervision, on a controlled task, with the risk driven down as far as it sensibly can be. What you cannot do is hand them a high-risk task, leave them to it, and call it training.

Informing Parents of a Child Worker

If your worker is below MSLA — a child, typically a work-experience placement — you have an extra duty. Before the child starts, you must provide the parent or guardian with comprehensible and relevant information on the key findings of the risk assessment and the control measures you have put in place. This can be done directly or through the school or college arranging the placement, but the duty to ensure the information reaches them is yours.

This duty applies to children only. For a 16 or 17-year-old who has left compulsory education, you are not legally required to inform their parents — though for a younger or more nervous starter, many good employers do it anyway as a matter of practice.

Supervision and the Competent Person

Supervision is the single most important control for a young worker. A young person should never be the one deciding whether a task is safe — that judgement has to come from a competent person: someone with the training, knowledge and experience to recognise the hazards and the authority to stop the work if needed.

On a trade site this usually means pairing the apprentice with a named mentor or supervisor who keeps them within sight on higher-risk tasks. The level of supervision should be proportionate to the risk: close, hands-on supervision for the first weeks and for any restricted work, easing only as the young person demonstrates genuine competence. As a rule, do not allow a young worker to work alone on any high-risk task — lone working on roofs, in excavations, with power tools or near live services is not appropriate for someone still learning to recognise danger.

Induction and Training

Every young worker needs a proper induction before they start — not a five-minute chat in the van. Cover the site rules, the hazards specific to the job, the emergency procedures, who their supervisor is, and crucially how to raise a concern or say "I don't know how to do this safely" without feeling foolish. Young people are reluctant to ask, so you have to make it easy and expected.

Back up the induction with task-specific training as they progress. Record what training they've had and when — both because it's good practice and because it evidences that you discharged your duty. Never assume a young worker has understood an instruction; check by asking them to explain it back or demonstrate it.

Working Time Limits for Young Workers

Young workers over MSLA but under 18 are covered by separate, stricter rules under the Working Time Regulations 1998. The general restrictions are:

• Daily hours: normally limited to 8 hours a day.
• Weekly hours: normally limited to 40 hours a week. Unlike the adult 48-hour limit, a young worker cannot opt out of these limits.
• Daily rest: at least 12 consecutive hours of rest in each 24-hour period.
• Weekly rest: at least 48 hours (typically two days) in each week.
• Rest breaks: a 30-minute break if they work more than 4.5 hours at a stretch.
• Night work: young workers are generally not permitted to work at night, subject to limited exceptions.

There are narrow exceptions for unforeseen circumstances and certain sectors, but for a typical trade business the safe assumption is: no more than 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, no night shifts, and proper breaks. Don't let an apprentice routinely stay late to "finish the job" — it's a breach.

Insurance and Practical Site Controls

Check that your employers' liability insurance explicitly covers apprentices and young workers — most policies do, but you need it confirmed in writing, because an apprentice is an employee for the purposes of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 and you must hold at least the statutory cover. If you use a training provider or agency, confirm where the liability sits before the placement begins.

Beyond the paperwork, the day-to-day controls matter just as much:

• PPE that fits: a young or smaller worker in oversized gloves, boots or a harness is not protected. Provide correctly sized PPE, not whatever is left in the bottom of the box.
• No lone working on high-risk tasks: keep them paired with a competent person for anything hazardous.
• Clear, specific instruction: tell them exactly what to do and what not to do, and confirm they've understood.
• Graduated responsibility: increase what they take on only as their competence is demonstrated, not by the calendar.
• An open door: make it normal for them to stop and ask. The young worker who feels able to say "this doesn't feel safe" is the one who goes home in one piece.

Quick Reference: Your Duties for Young Workers