Sample policy · Domiciliary care

Lone working and personal safety policy (domiciliary care)

Statutory anchor: Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 2, and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 3, are the primary law for lone working. This policy also engages Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), Regulation 17 (good governance) and Regulation 18 (staffing) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2936). · primary source

1. What the regulation says

The primary law for lone working is the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which are not held in the Verivius regulation manifest. The CQC duty this policy operationalises is Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment):

Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way for service users. (Reg 12(1) (the headline duty))

assessing the risks to the health and safety of service users of receiving the care or treatment, (Reg 12(2)(a) (risk assessment))

doing all that is reasonably practicable to mitigate any such risks, (Reg 12(2)(b) (risk mitigation))

ensuring that persons providing care or treatment to service users have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to do so safely, (Reg 12(2)(c) (staff competence))

The full text of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/2, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3242/regulation/3, and Regulation 12 is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/12. Where this policy and the regulation diverge, the regulation wins.

2. Plain-English summary

Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way. The regulation lists the areas a provider must address, including risk assessment, risk mitigation, staff competence, safe premises, safe equipment, sufficient equipment and medicines, medicines safety, infection prevention and shared-care planning. Regulation 12 is central to CQC's safety expectations. For lone working, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 add the employer's duty to assess and control the risks to staff who work alone.

3. Purpose

Care workers in a domiciliary service spend almost all of their working day alone, in other people's homes and travelling between them. This policy sets out how the Service keeps those workers safe: how it assesses the risk of each visit, how it knows where every worker is and that each one has finished safely, what a worker does when a situation feels unsafe, and how the Service learns from incidents.

The Service must verify this policy against current health and safety law and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidance before adoption.

4. Scope

This policy applies to:

Lone working is not only working at night. A worker on a routine daytime call is still alone in someone else's home, and this policy applies in full.

5. Roles and responsibilities

6. Operational lone-working procedure

  1. Review the planned work. Before the shift, the worker checks the visit schedule, known household and area risks, tasks requiring two people and the current on-call details.
  2. Confirm readiness. The worker confirms that their phone and any alarm are working and charged. The coordinator resolves missing risk information or equipment before the visit.
  3. Check in. The worker records the start of the visit through the approved system. The central record must show who is attending, where they are and when the visit should finish.
  4. Use dynamic risk assessment. On approach and during the visit, the worker looks for changes such as an unknown person, aggression, an unsafe animal, intoxication, environmental danger or a task that cannot be completed by one person.
  5. Withdraw and call for help when needed. The worker moves to safety, contacts the office or on-call manager and calls emergency services where there is immediate danger. They do not remain to protect equipment or complete a task.
  6. Check out or trigger escalation. The worker records the end of the visit. If the local tolerance expires without a check-out, the coordinator follows the overdue-worker escalation route until the worker's safety is confirmed.
  7. Record and review. The worker reports any threat, near miss, changed risk or failed control the same working day. The manager updates the risk assessment and visit plan before the next attendance where required.

7. Assessing the risk before a worker attends

The Service assesses the risk of each new package of care before the first visit, and reviews it when anything changes. The assessment looks at:

Each risk the assessment finds is recorded with the control that reduces it. The assessment is shared with every worker who will attend, and is reviewed after any incident at the home.

8. Knowing where every worker is: check-in and check-out

The Service operates a system that records when each worker starts and finishes every visit, so that a worker who does not finish a visit when expected is noticed quickly.

The Service sets and records the overdue-visit time limit and the escalation steps, and tests the arrangement so that staff know it works.

9. The worker's right to know about a risk

A worker has the right to know about a known risk at a home before they attend. The Service does not send a worker into a situation it knows to be unsafe without telling them and putting controls in place first. Where a risk is too high for one worker to manage, the Service arranges two workers, changes the visit, or does not send a worker until the risk is controlled.

10. Staying safe during a visit

The Service expects every worker to:

A worker who leaves a home early because they did not feel safe has done the right thing. The Service supports that decision and never treats it as a failure to deliver care.

11. Travelling between visits

Travel is part of lone working. The Service:

12. Out of hours and the on-call route

The Service has a named on-call contact at all times when visits are taking place. Every worker knows how to reach the on-call contact, and the on-call contact knows how to reach a manager and the emergency services. The on-call route is tested and the contact details are kept current.

13. When a visit cannot go ahead safely

If a worker cannot enter a home, gets no reply, or judges that a visit cannot go ahead safely, they contact the office or the on-call contact straight away. The Service then decides the safe next step, taking account of the risk to the person who was expecting care (see the visit scheduling, missed and late visits policy). The worker does not put their own safety at risk to complete a visit.

14. Reporting, recording and learning

15. Required lone-working record

The record includes:

The schedule, call-monitoring record and incident record must be consistent. Corrections keep an audit trail and do not overwrite the original time or response.

16. Training

Every worker who visits people at home completes, at induction and on a refresher cadence the Service sets:

The Service records who has completed each item and when the next refresher is due.

17. Audit cadence

The coordinator checks unresolved missed check-outs and safety calls at the end of every shift. Each month, the Registered Manager samples 10 lone-worker visits or all visits if fewer than 10 occurred, and confirms that:

The overdue-worker and on-call process is tested at least quarterly, including an out-of-hours scenario. The Registered Manager reviews the results, records each improvement action with an owner and due date and checks a later sample before closing it.

18. Sources and further reading

This template is based on CQC's guidance for providers and managers, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, and other topic-specific legislation and guidance listed below. It is a starting point for adaptation, not a substitute for legal, clinical, HR, safeguarding or specialist professional advice.

19. Related reading

20. When to seek further advice

Seek specialist advice where the issue involves serious harm, safeguarding, deprivation of liberty, restraint, children, professional misconduct, controlled drugs, radiation, termination of pregnancy, infection outbreak, water safety, employment dismissal, DBS barring referral, or regulatory enforcement.

21. Document control

Version Date Author Changes
v1.1 2026-07-19 Verivius (sample) Added role ownership, the visit workflow, exact lone-working record fields and tested audit controls.
v1 2026-06-10 Verivius (sample) Initial sample template, conformed to the Verivius policy standard.

This sample policy template was issued by Verivius. It is a template, not a substitute for legal advice or the provider's own policy-development process. Where this template and live law or regulator guidance diverge, the live source wins.

What good looks like here

Written from an ex-CQC inspector's chair, but the point is safe, well-led care your team can stand behind. Each row shows what strong evidence looks like, what thin evidence looks like, and where the expectation comes from.

Home care happens where nobody else can see it. A worker is alone in someone else's house, then alone on the road to the next call, and if a visit turns frightening there is no colleague in the room to notice. That makes a missed check-out unusual among care records, because it can mean two emergencies at once: a worker who has come to harm, and a person still waiting for the medicine, the transfer or the meal they were promised. Neither is visible until somebody in the office goes looking. The risks themselves are ordinary and knowable in advance, such as a relative with a history of aggression, a dog the last worker could not get past, or a transfer that genuinely needs two pairs of hands. A worker who learns about these at the door rushes, improvises, or attempts a two-person task alone, and the person on the receiving end gets hurried, anxious care from someone who is frightened. A worker who was told beforehand, who knows the office will notice if they do not check out, and who knows that walking away from an unsafe home costs them nothing, gives calm and attentive care and reports the next problem early. The pre-visit risk record, the check-in and check-out trail and the escalation log are how a Registered Manager knows, on any given day, that every worker got home and every person got their call.

  1. A missed check-out actually sets the escalation route running, rather than a policy that only names one. On a real overdue visit the worker is contacted, and no reply escalates to a named manager and, where there is reason to believe the worker is at risk, to the emergency services.

    Strong evidence: The lone-working record showing the overdue tolerance and the on-call person for that shift, and every contact attempt, response, decision and escalation time logged when a check-out is missed, plus the quarterly test of the overdue-worker and on-call process including an out-of-hours scenario (sections 8, 15 and 17).

    Weak evidence: An on-call name and an overdue tolerance are written down, but no real missed check-out has been worked through on paper: no times against the contact attempts, no recorded manager decision, no point at which the question of calling the emergency services was asked and answered. The Service's own out-of-hours test of the escalation route sits in the audit cadence with no dated result to show it was ever run, and that quarterly interval is a Verivius default rather than a statutory one.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

  2. A worker is told about a known risk at a home before they attend, not warned only after an incident. The risk and the control that reduces it reach the worker up front, and a two-worker call is staffed as two rather than covered by one.

    Strong evidence: The pre-visit risk assessment with each risk recorded against the control that reduces it and shared with every worker who will attend, and the record fields for the current visit risk rating, controls, the date staff were informed and any two-worker requirement (sections 7 and 15).

    Weak evidence: A pre-visit risk assessment listing hazards with no control recorded against each one, or a two-worker requirement on the assessment while the rota shows a single worker attended. The risk information sits in the office file with no dated record that it reached the worker before they knocked, so a known aggressive relative or an unsafe dog is first met at the door. Assessments never revisited after an incident at that address are the same failure one step later.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, reg 3(1) and reg 10(1)

  3. A worker who leaves a visit because they did not feel safe is supported and the risk reassessed, not marked down for failing to deliver care.

    Strong evidence: The record of support offered to the worker after a withdrawal or a frightening incident and the date the risk assessment and care plan were updated, against the policy that leaving an unsafe home is the right thing and is never treated as a failure to deliver care (sections 10, 14 and 15).

    Weak evidence: No record that a worker who withdrew from an unsafe visit was offered any support afterwards, and no dated update to the risk assessment or the care plan before the next attendance. Worse, the withdrawal is logged against the worker as a missed or failed call, which teaches the whole round that leaving costs them and quietly discourages the next person from acting on a bad feeling at a door.

    What the regulator expects to see. Not a law in itself, but CQC judges you against it, so an inspector will look for it and expect a reason where you depart from it.

  4. The schedule, the call-monitoring record and the incident record tell the same story about what the person actually received, and a corrected time keeps an audit trail rather than overwriting the original.

    Strong evidence: The requirement that the schedule, call-monitoring record and incident record are consistent and that corrections keep an audit trail and do not overwrite the original time or response (section 15).

    Weak evidence: The schedule, the call-monitoring log and the incident record give three different finish times for the same visit and nobody has reconciled them, so the record of what the person actually received is not accurate. A corrected check-out time is typed straight over the original, leaving no way to see what was first recorded, who changed it or when.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

  5. A lone-working incident runs through to a recorded outcome and shared learning at the governance meeting, not just a report filed on the day, so the next worker at that address meets a control rather than the same near miss again.

    Strong evidence: Same-working-day reporting of threats, near misses and unsafe situations, incidents logged and carried through to a recorded outcome with actions completed, and lone-working incidents reviewed together at the governance meeting for patterns, with the monthly Registered Manager sample confirming incidents are reported, recorded and learned from (sections 14 and 17).

    Weak evidence: Incident forms are completed on the day and filed, with no outcome field, no named owner and no closure date, so nothing shows the report was carried through to a result. Governance minutes record that lone-working incidents were discussed without naming a theme, agreeing an action or re-sampling later, while the same near miss at the same address keeps reappearing. The monthly manager sample is a Verivius default cadence, not a statutory interval.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

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Last verified 20 July 2026

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Last reviewed 10 June 2026