This register should be used by the Committee to inform them of the status of their legal and other obligations. Answer: Of course, there should be no problem showing that you are working towards full compliance. As with all types of internal audits, it`s common to find problems and things that are missing/not going well in organizations, so make sure you have a clear and realistic action plan with responsibilities and deadlines. I have very rarely done a compliance audit assessment for an organization and found no issues or actions to take, but it`s all part of your continuous improvement. Answer: When trying to conduct a compliance assessment, you need to understand what each law requires of you as an organization so that you can then verify that it happens. If your legal register provides you with information on the compliance obligations of each applicable legal act, the register may be used during that exercise. If this information is not currently available, you should first compile it to understand what activities, documents, and records need to be reviewed to assess compliance. If you need further assistance in assessing compliance, please contact The Compliance People, we regularly conduct health, safety and environmental compliance audits for organisations. A: For standards, you need to define and have access to all relevant compliance obligations/legal requirements so that this includes any laws that have been around for some time, such as the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1974. Some of the principles of this Act are duplicated in other important parts of the Health and Safety Act, such as the Occupational Health and Safety Management Regulations 1999, but the 1974 Act is at the heart of health and safety, I actually find it useful to focus on this Act when assessing compliance audits in relation to health and safety. Answer: Conformity assessment is the actual activity/audit that is performed to assess compliance with laws – that is, assuming the compliance obligations that the legislation imposes on your business and ensuring that this happens.

Compliance status is the degree of compliance with a piece of legislation, i.e. fully compliant, partially compliant, non-compliant, etc. You can therefore only determine the state of compliance with a law by assessing compliance with that law. Once you have determined what might be true, it becomes much easier to determine what is true. Write this down for posterity (because that`s what a system is), and you will have a record of the decisions of applicability that have been made. It`s so much better than wondering if something has been looked at and found unworkable or never considered at all. It is very useful for a company that the legal register not only contains a list of legal titles, but also summarizes each entry in terms of the compliance obligations that the legislation imposes on organizations. This then leads to a better understanding of compliance and the activities to be performed and the processes to be put in place to ensure compliance within the organization. Answer: Do you have an area in each aspect in your register of environmental aspects, for example: a column or field where you can identify and record any applicable legislation. For a waste aspect, for example, you would have the main waste regulations that apply to the related organization. Depending on the system/format of your aspect register, these may be legal titles or references/codes/hyperlinks from the legal register.

Answer: You would likely have minor non-compliance in your external management system certification/monitoring audits if there are other requirements that apply to the organization that are not recorded in the legal register or other management system documents. Answer: Absolutely, we have personally helped hundreds of organizations create legal registries and, as a company, we have almost 30 years of experience in helping organizations maintain compliance. If there is no one who is competent or who has the time and resources to carry out this activity within the organization, it can be a real advantage to invest in external support, as you then have the assurance that the register is correct and can be completed in much less time than doing it yourself. Our team allowed us to identify our legal and other requirements that we had to meet. The legal registry becomes an important resource for an organization to determine what it needs to do to ensure compliance. The alternative would be to look for relevant legislation whenever a problem arises, which would be time-consuming and ineffective. It would also be unclear whether the legislation obtained by searching the Internet was the latest version or whether it had been superseded by other rules. New laws are constantly being enacted and amendments are constantly being made to existing laws.

The registry must be updated to reflect any new or amended legislation that applies to the corporation and to remove anything that has been revoked or replaced. Answer: Yes, you should definitely consider the needs and expectations of your interested parties regarding other requirements – this will potentially be one of the main sources of other requirements. Clause 4.2 of ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018 contains a specific requirement to determine which stakeholder needs and expectations become compliance/legal and other requirements. If you need further guidance, please contact the Compliance Officers here or email the NQA friendly team here. «The organization shall establish, implement, maintain and have access to a process for identifying and accessing current legal and other requirements that apply to its hazards, occupational health and safety risks and occupational health and safety management system, determine how these legal and other requirements apply to the organization, and what must be communicated, these legal requirements and other requirements at the time of establishment consider the implementation, maintenance and continuous improvement of the occupational health and safety management system.