Young Workers and Apprentices — Health and Safety Duties When You Employ Under-18s (2026)

Two Definitions You Need to Get Right

The law uses two distinct terms, and the rules differ depending on which one applies to the person in front of you. Both come up regularly in trades.

• A young person is anyone under 18. Most apprentices and many new starters fall into this group.
• A child is anyone below the minimum school leaving age (the last Friday in June of the school year in which they turn 16). This is who you have on a work-experience placement arranged through a school or college.

Every child is also a young person, but a child attracts stricter duties on top — most importantly, you must involve their parents or guardians. Work out which category applies before the placement starts, because it changes what you have to do.

The Extra Duty: A Risk Assessment for Young Workers

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, you must carry out — or review an existing — risk assessment specifically for the young person before they start work. This is not the same as your general site risk assessment. It has to take account of factors that simply don't apply to an experienced adult:

• Their inexperience and lack of familiarity with the work and the site
• Their immaturity and lack of awareness of existing or potential risks
• Their stage of physical and psychological development
• The fitting-out and layout of the workplace and the work equipment they'll use
• The nature, degree and duration of any exposure to harmful agents
• The form, range and use of work equipment and how it is handled
• The extent of the health and safety training you will provide

Do this honestly. A 16-year-old on their first week doesn't recognise the hazards an experienced tradesperson reads instinctively — the assessment has to reflect that gap and build in controls that close it.

Work Young People Must Not Do

The regulations restrict certain work for young people. As a rule, a young person must not be employed to do work that is:

• Beyond their physical or psychological capacity
• Involving harmful exposure to certain agents — for example some chemicals, lead, asbestos or radiation
• Involving harmful exposure to extreme heat or cold, noise or vibration
• Carrying a high risk of accidents that a young person is unlikely to recognise because of their inexperience or lack of attention to safety

The Training and Supervision Exception

That restriction is not absolute. A young person who is over the minimum school leaving age may do some of this restricted work where all of the following apply:

• It is necessary for their training
• They are supervised by a competent person
• The risk is reduced so far as is reasonably practicable

This is the exception that makes apprenticeships in trades possible at all. An apprentice plasterer or roofer has to be exposed to real work to learn it — but only under proper supervision and only once you've cut the risk down as far as you reasonably can. The exception does not apply to children below school leaving age: for them the restricted work is off-limits, full stop.

Children on Work Experience: Stricter Rules

When you take a child below the minimum school leaving age — typically a Year 10 or Year 11 work-experience placement — the duties tighten:

• You must inform the parents or guardians (usually via the school) of the key findings of the risk assessment and the control measures you have put in place, before the placement begins.
• The training-and-supervision exception above does not apply, so genuinely hazardous restricted work is excluded entirely.
• Placements are short and observational by nature — keep the child away from dangerous machinery, working at height and live trade hazards, and plan tasks that are safe to watch or do with close supervision.

Schools and placement organisers will usually expect to see evidence of your risk assessment and insurance before they confirm the placement. Having it ready makes you the employer they want to send students to.

Practical Controls on a Trade Site

Compliance on paper means nothing if the day-to-day controls aren't there. These are the measures that actually keep a young worker safe on a busy site:

• Extra supervision and a named mentor. Assign one experienced person who is responsible for the young worker each day, not a vague "keep an eye on them".
• Proper induction and training. Walk them through the site, the hazards, the emergency arrangements and how to raise a concern — and record that you did.
• Clear, specific instructions. Don't assume knowledge. Spell out the safe method for each task and check they've understood it.
• Buddying with an experienced worker. Pair them up so they always have someone to ask and someone watching how they work.
• PPE that actually fits. Standard-issue boots, gloves, glasses and hi-vis are often sized for adults — make sure the young worker's kit fits and they know how and when to wear it.
• Controlled access to dangerous machinery and vehicles. Restrict who can operate plant, power tools, telehandlers and site vehicles, and keep young workers off them unless the training exception is properly met.
• Check working-time limits. Young workers have different rest-break and hours rules to adults — build your rotas around them rather than treating the young worker like everyone else.

Working Time: Different Rules for Under-18s

Young workers — those over school leaving age but under 18 — generally have stricter working-time protection than adults. In broad terms:

• They should normally work no more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. These are hard limits in most cases, not an average you can balance out over a reference period.
• They are entitled to longer rest breaks — a 30-minute break where they work more than 4.5 hours, plus 12 hours' daily rest and 48 hours' weekly rest.
• There are restrictions on night work, with a general prohibition on working between 10pm (or 11pm) and 6am or 7am, subject to limited exceptions.

For children below school leaving age, the local-authority by-laws and the Children and Young Persons Act limits are tighter still. If your standard working day is longer than 8 hours, you cannot simply slot a young worker into it — plan their hours separately.

Apprentices Are Employees Too

It's worth being clear: an apprentice is an employee. They get the same health and safety protection as any other worker, plus the additional young-worker duties if they're under 18, plus the structure of the training relationship. Don't treat "they're learning" as a reason to expose them to more risk — it's a reason to supervise them more closely. The training exception lets an apprentice do restricted work to learn the trade, but only under a competent person and only with the risk reduced as far as reasonably practicable.

Quick Reference: Employer's Steps for Young Workers

The Bottom Line

Employing a young worker or apprentice is not a compliance trap — thousands of trade businesses do it well every year and build brilliant teams out of it. The duties come down to a handful of habits: assess the risk for that individual before they start, keep them out of genuinely dangerous work unless it's necessary for training and properly supervised, give them real induction and a named mentor, respect the tighter working-time limits, and loop in parents when you've got a school-age child on placement. Get those right and you protect the young person, protect your business, and earn the reputation as an employer schools and colleges want to send their best people to.