Health and safety audit software manages the full cycle of workplace safety inspections and audits: scheduling them against a framework such as ISO 45001 or HSG65, capturing findings on site, and tracking each finding through root cause analysis to an independently verified close-out. It differs from a checklist app in that the finding, not the checklist, is the unit of work.
In most UK food factories, food safety runs on a system and health and safety runs on a shared drive. Not because anyone decided that — because food safety has an external auditor arriving every year and H&S usually does not. The result is a manager who can trace any BRC non-conformance through its full lifecycle in minutes, and who cannot say whether last quarter’s safety tour actions were ever closed.
Health and safety at a food site is rarely a full-time role. It sits with the Technical Manager, the Operations Manager, or a SHE manager covering three sites from a car. Whoever holds it inherits a real legal duty, a genuine risk of someone getting hurt, and — almost always — no system.
A safety tour fills a clipboard. The findings get typed into a spreadsheet, emailed to a supervisor, chased twice. Nobody records that the guard was refitted, so the same finding appears next month.
At the annual review you can report accident numbers. You cannot show whether the same three causes keep recurring, because each tour lives in its own file.
Food safety findings sit in a proper register with root cause and verification. H&S findings sit in Excel. Same factory, same supervisors, two standards of evidence.
An HSE visit or an insurer’s survey asks for a documented, followed system. A folder of completed checklists proves the checks happened. It does not prove anything was fixed.
Near misses get reported on paper slips. The investigation stops at “not paying attention”, so the underlying condition survives and produces the next one.
LOLER, PSSR, LEV, PAT, fire equipment — all on fixed legal cycles, all typically in a calendar reminder owned by one person who is now on leave.
The obvious fix is a checklist app. They are good at what they do: build a form, hand out tablets, collect photos. Plenty of food sites use one for safety tours and it is a clear improvement on paper. Where they stop short is everything after the checklist:
| Capability | Paper / spreadsheet | Generic checklist app | AuditCore |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety tours on a tablet | ✕ Clipboard | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes, offline-capable |
| ISO 45001 question set pre-loaded | ✕ | ~ Build it yourself | ✓ 21 sections, 81 questions |
| HSG65 question set pre-loaded | ✕ | ~ Build it yourself | ✓ 12 sections, 56 questions |
| Annual programme with clause coverage | ✕ Calendar reminders | ✕ Schedules a form, not coverage | ✓ Built against the framework |
| Findings become tracked non-conformances | ✕ Manual transcription | ~ Simple actions | ✓ Automatic, clause-linked |
| Root cause required before close-out | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ Two-phase CAPA |
| Independent verification of close-out | ✕ | ~ Rarely enforced | ✓ Separate verifier required |
| Food safety and H&S in one register | ✕ Two systems | ✕ H&S only | ✓ One register, filter by discipline |
| Priced per site, not per user | — | ✕ Usually per seat | ✓ Per site, all features |
H&S is not a separate product or a paid module. It appears in the same AuditCore subscription, alongside the food safety standards you already run.
ISO 45001 is the international management system standard. You do not need to be certified to audit against it, and most food sites never will be — but its structure covers exactly the ground an inspector or insurer probes: hazard identification, worker consultation, competence, emergency preparedness, incident investigation.
HSG65 is the HSE’s own framework, organised as Plan, Do, Check, Act. It is lighter, written in plain English, and free to reference. For a single site with no certification ambitions it is usually the more honest starting point — here is what auditing against it actually involves.
This is the part that is hard to buy and hard to build. A finding raised on the shopfloor becomes a non-conformance with a severity, an owner and a due date. Closing it takes two stages — the immediate correction, then the root cause and the preventive action that stops recurrence. Someone other than the person who fixed it has to verify it is genuinely closed.
Food sites already do this for food safety because BRC requires it. Applying the same rigour to a defeated guard or a blocked fire exit is not extra work. It is the same workflow pointed at a different risk.
If your safety tours already happen but the findings die in a spreadsheet, the gap is not inspection — it is everything after. AuditCore runs H&S audits and inspections through the same programme, register and verified close-out as your food safety work, in one subscription, priced per site.
It is an audit, inspection and corrective action system. It is not a full EHS platform, and pretending otherwise would waste your trial.
It does not deliver e-learning or hold training certificates, store occupational health or health surveillance records, issue permits to work, or submit RIDDOR reports to the HSE. If those are your main requirement, buy a dedicated EHS suite. If your problem is that nobody can prove last quarter’s safety actions were closed, this is built for that.
What the SafetyCulture free tier costs once you pass 10 users, and why per-seat pricing works against a safety programme.
The 20 items worth walking every week, free to copy, with how often to run each one.
What the HSE’s Plan, Do, Check, Act framework asks for, section by section.
14-day free trial. No card required. H&S and food safety in the same subscription.
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