HSE has developed this free interactive software to help farmers carry out a comprehensive health and safety assessment of their farms and to raise the levels of health and safety awareness in the industry. It is aimed at all farmers (regardless of whether you employ anyone) and farm managers who are responsible for health and safety.

Originally produced in 2005, the software and question set has been revised and a new version launched in April 2008 (version number 3.2.2).

Features of the self-assessment software include:

• a free downloadable application which can be installed on your computer and completed off-line at your leisure;
• a configuration screen that tailors the questions to those which are relevant to your farm;
• a series of questions on key health and safety topics;
• a benchmark for each question of the minimum standards which you should be reaching to comply with legal requirements and the reasoning behind it;
• the ability to order relevant free HSE guidance from HSE Books;
• a facility for you to add additional risks to your assessment on issues/hazards which are either not covered by the questions or which are unique to your farm;
• a facility to allow separate assessments to be produced if you have more than one farm/holding;
• outputs in the form of a prioritised list of identified actions.

You can download a copy of the software from the download page. Download time has been estimated at 15 minutes on a standard dial-up modem, faster on broadband and ISDN. The software is also available free on CD-ROM.