A Morning on the Farm

A Dairy Farmer's Honest Conversation with a Health & Safety Consultant

Recently, one of our WT Consultancy consultants spent a morning on a mixed dairy farm in the South West with a new client, a third-generation farmer we'll call John. Between milking and moving stock, he pulled up a couple of feed buckets, made two mugs of tea, and did what a lot of farmers wish they had time to do, he asked the awkward questions about health and safety.
It was the kind of conversation we genuinely enjoy. Honest, practical, and grounded in the reality of running a working farm. With John's permission, we've written it up here,  lightly tidied, because his questions are the ones we hear again and again from farm owners and health and safety managers across Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset.
If you recognise yourself in any of his questions, you're not alone.

​"So what actually happens when a health and safety consultant turns up on a farm?"
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​John: Right, before we start, what actually happens? Because I've had people out before with clipboards, they've disappeared for two weeks, then a massive report drops through the door telling me everything I'm doing wrong. I don't need another one of those.

Consultant: Completely fair. On a working farm, a good visit shouldn't feel like an inspection, it should feel like a proper walk-round with someone who's on your side.
For us, a first visit is mostly about listening and looking. We'll sit down for ten minutes so you can tell us what worries you, what's changed recently, and where you've had near misses. Then we'll walk the yard, the parlour, the tracks, the workshop and any outlying buildings together. We'll look at how people actually work, not how a policy says they should.
The report that follows is short, prioritised and written in plain English. You'll get a small number of things that genuinely need sorting, and a clear view of what's already good. If you've paid for a consultant and you can't understand the report, we haven't done our job.
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"I've got risk assessments in a folder somewhere. Is that enough?"

John: Honestly, I've got a folder. Someone did them years ago. I'm not sure I could tell you what's in it without looking.

Consultant: That's more common than people admit. A folder of risk assessments only protects you if two things are true, they reflect what you actually do today, and the people doing the work know what's in them.
On a farm, the work changes constantly. New kit, new contractors, seasonal staff, a different silage contractor, a new heifer shed. If the paperwork hasn't moved with the farm, it's a snapshot of a different business.

The practical test we use is simple:

• Can you point to the top three risks on your farm without opening the folder?
• Could a new relief milker be walked through what's dangerous in ten minutes?
• If HSE walked in tomorrow, would your paperwork match what they'd see happening in the yard?

If any of those are shaky, the folder isn't earning its keep. Fixing it isn't about writing more, it's about writing less, but making it real.

"The biggest risks on a dairy farm — what do you actually worry about?"

John: Alright, I'll bite. What do you lot lie awake worrying about when you think of a farm like mine?

Consultant: Honestly? Four things dominate.

Vehicles and moving machinery. Workplace transport is consistently the biggest killer in agriculture. Tractors, telehandlers, feeder wagons, quad bikes, slurry tankers, anything that moves. It's rarely one dramatic failure, it's usually a combination of poor visibility, a shortcut through the yard, and someone doing a job they've done a thousand times.
Livestock handling. Especially with cows and calves around calving. Even quiet cows behave differently when they're protecting a calf or being separated from the herd. Handling systems, escape routes and lone working all matter here.
Slurry. Slurry stores, gas from disturbed slurry, and drowning risks. It's an area where the consequences are catastrophic and the warnings are often subtle.
Working at height and on roofs. Fragile roofs, cleaning gutters, fixing sheeting after a storm. It doesn't take much of a fall.
Sitting behind all of those is the human side,  lone working, long hours, fatigue, and pressure at busy times of year. A tired farmer at 10pm during silage is a different risk profile from the same farmer at 10am in February.
The point isn't to frighten anyone. It's to be honest about where the serious harm sits, so we can put the effort in the right places.

"I've heard about PUWER and LOLER. Do I really need to care?"

​John: I get sent emails about PUWER and LOLER. My eyes glaze over. What do I actually need to do?

Consultant: In plain terms:

• PUWER is about the equipment you use, tractors, PTO shafts, feeder wagons, workshop tools. It needs to be suitable, maintained, and used by people who’ve been shown how to use it safely.
• LOLER is about anything you use for lifting, telehandler forks, chains, slings, hoists. Those need to be inspected on a set cycle by a competent person, and you need to keep the certificates.

The bit that catches farms out isn't the regulations themselves, it's the paperwork trail. You might be maintaining the kit perfectly, but if you can't show a LOLER certificate for the telehandler forks or a service record for the loader, you look like you're not.
The fix is boring but effective, one folder (paper or digital), a simple schedule, and a set of reminders. We can build that with you in an afternoon, and it takes about ten minutes a month to keep alive after that.

"Contractors come in and out all the time. Who's responsible if something goes wrong?"

John: Silage contractors, hoof trimmer, AI tech, a scanner, the vet, someone up a ladder fixing gutters. They're in and out constantly. If one of them has an accident on my yard, is that on me?

Consultant: The short answer is: often, yes, at least partly. As the person in control of the site, you have duties to make sure the yard is safe for people working on it, and to share the relevant risk information with anyone coming in.
The good news is that you don't need a bureaucratic contractor management system. You need three practical things:

1. A short set of site rules, where to park, one-way systems if you have them, no children in working areas, no going into the collecting yard while cows are moving, how to report an incident.
2. A quick check that anyone doing higher-risk work (roofing, tree work, confined spaces, lifting operations) has the right insurance and competence.
3. A short briefing for anyone new on site, even a 60-second "this is how we work here" chat when they arrive.

For most farms, that's enough to move you from "hoping it's fine" to "clearly in control." It also tends to filter out the contractors who cut corners, because they don't like being asked.
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"My staff have always done it that way. How do I change the culture without falling out with them?"

John: This is the one I struggle with. Some of my lads have been here longer than I've been running the place. I can't just march in with a clipboard.
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Consultant: You're right, that approach doesn't work, and it usually makes things worse. Farm safety culture doesn't shift because someone waves a policy around. It shifts when the people doing the work feel that safety is being done with them, not to them.
A few things tend to work:

• Ask, don’t tell. "What’s the bit of this job that worries you?" gets a much better answer than "Are you following the risk assessment?"
• Fix one thing they’ve mentioned. If the lads have been saying for two years that the parlour steps are slippery, and you sort it, everything else you ask for lands better.
• Short, regular, on-the-job conversations. Five minutes at the start of a task beats an hour in a Portakabin.
• Back your supervisors. They set the tone. If they walk past something unsafe, so will everyone else.

You don't have to become a different person to run a safer farm. You just have to be consistent about a small number of things.

"What about training? I can't send everyone off on courses every week."

John: Training's a sore point. I can't stand losing people for a day to sit in a classroom, and half of what they learn doesn't fit what we actually do.

Consultant: Agreed, generic classroom training has its place, but it isn't the main event on a farm.
Most of the training that actually reduces incidents on a working farm is:

• Task specific. How we start the tractor, hitch the slurry tanker, move cows through our handling system. Delivered on the yard, with the actual kit.
• Short. Ten to twenty minutes at the point of the job, not two hours in a room.
• Refreshed regularly, not once and forgotten. A toolbox talk before silage, before calving, before contractors arrive.
• Recorded simply. A name, a date, a topic, a signature. That’s enough.

There are still things that genuinely need formal training, telehandler tickets, first aid, forklift, working at height where it applies, and we'll be honest about which ones. But the day-to-day safety of your farm is won on the yard, not in a classroom.

"I've got more than one site. How do I keep standards the same across all of them?"

John: We've picked up a second unit up the road, and I've been asked about taking on a third. I don't want the safety on those sites to slip just because I'm not there every day.

Consultant: This is one of the most common questions we get from farms that are growing. The trap is trying to run every site as if it's the home farm, when the reality is that each site has its own quirks and people.
What tends to work is:

• One shared baseline. The same site rules, the same core risk assessments, the same reporting system across all sites.
• Site-specific add-ons for anything unique, a particular layout, a different type of stock, a shared access track.
• A named person per site who owns the day-to-day. Not necessarily a full-time safety role, just someone who’s clearly responsible and knows what "good" looks like.
• A simple monthly walk-round at each site, using the same short checklist. It doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective.

For a farm running two or three sites, that framework is usually enough. Beyond that, having an outside consultancy that visits each site on a rotation, and keeps the paperwork and actions consistent, takes a lot of weight off the owner.

"Do I really need an outside consultancy, or can I just do this myself?"

John: Honest question, can I just crack on with this myself? I don't want to be paying for something I could do in an evening.
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Consultant: Also a fair question, and the honest answer is: it depends.
You can absolutely do a lot of this yourself, especially if you're the kind of owner who reads the guidance, cares about your team, and is prepared to keep the paperwork alive over time. Plenty of good farms run that way.
Where an outside consultancy tends to earn its keep is when:

• You want an independent view, someone with no history on the farm who’ll notice what you’ve stopped seeing.
• You want to save time, especially at busy times of year, and offload the paperwork side.
• You want a competent person in the background you can ring when something new comes up, a new build, a new bit of kit, a serious near miss, an insurance question.
• You’re growing or taking on more sites, and want consistent standards without hiring an in-house H&S manager.
• You want your health and safety to be audit ready at all times — for insurers, buyers, assurance schemes, or a possible HSE visit.

We tend to work with farms on a retained basis rather than one-off audits, because that's where the real value sits, someone who knows your farm, visits regularly, keeps things current, and picks up the phone when you need them.
If, after a first visit, you'd genuinely be better off doing it yourself, we'll tell you.

How WT Consultancy supports farms like John's

WT Consultancy is a UK-based health and safety consultancy working with over 1,000 businesses across the South West, including a growing number of dairy, livestock and mixed farms. We're based in Cullompton, Devon and cover Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset.
For farms, we typically help with:

• Farm risk assessments across the yard, parlour, workshop, buildings and outlying land.
• Machinery, PUWER and LOLER documentation and inspection scheduling.
• Livestock, slurry and working-at-height risk work.
• Contractor control, practical site rules, briefings, and checks.
• Short, task-specific staff training and toolbox talks delivered on the yard.
• Retained health and safety support for owners and in-house H&S managers, acting as your competent person and ongoing advisor.
• Multi-site consistency, one baseline, tailored per site, with regular walk-rounds.

Our approach is deliberately proportionate. We're not here to bury you in paperwork or scare you into buying more than you need. We're here to make your farm safer, your paperwork honest, and your day a bit quieter.

If you'd like a conversation like John's

​If any of these questions felt familiar, we're happy to have the same conversation on your farm — no pressure, no long report at the end unless you want one.

Call: 01884 675101

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.wtconsultancy.co.uk
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Ask for an initial farm safety visit. We'll come out, walk the yard with you, and give you a straight answer on what's working, what isn't, and what's actually worth doing next.