Courier and Delivery Driver Health and Safety Templates & Guidance

To create a risk assessment for your courier or delivery business, you must identify hazards, decide who could be harmed and how, put suitable control measures in place, and review the assessment regularly.

A courier and delivery driver risk assessment should reflect the real activities you carry out, such as driving for work, multi-drop deliveries, manual handling of parcels, loading and unloading at depots or warehouses, lone working, and interaction with customers and the public. Start by identifying hazards linked to those tasks, including road traffic risks, vehicle safety, fatigue, slips and trips, poor load security, adverse weather, and fire risks linked to vehicles or premises.

Once hazards are identified, you must record who could be harmed — such as delivery drivers, customers, pedestrians, contractors, or visitors — and how injuries or incidents could occur. Suitable control measures should then be documented, communicated, and reviewed when work changes. To make this process straightforward, our Courier and Delivery Driver Risk Assessment Template is pre-filled with common industry hazards and controls, allowing you to quickly tailor it to your delivery operation.

For a complete compliance solution, our Courier and Delivery Driver Health and Safety Template Bundle includes supporting policies and reporting documents.

Yes — courier and delivery businesses must complete a risk assessment to identify and manage risks associated with their work.

Every employer or self-employed delivery driver has a duty to assess risks that could affect drivers, customers, members of the public, contractors, and others. This applies to all courier and delivery operations, including van-based delivery work, same-day couriers, parcel delivery businesses, and multi-drop routes. Driving for work, manual handling, lone working, and loading activities all present foreseeable risks that must be managed.

Our Courier and Delivery Driver Risk Assessment Template provides a clear, professional format to help you demonstrate compliance, manage liability, and protect your business if an incident occurs. If your business employs five or more people, risk assessments must be recorded in writing. Even for smaller delivery businesses or self-employed couriers, keeping written risk assessments is strongly recommended as best practice.

Courier and delivery businesses typically need a risk assessment, health and safety policy, accident reporting procedures, and supporting safety guidance relevant to their operations.

The exact documents required depend on how your business operates, but most delivery businesses will need to conduct a Risk Assessment, a written Health and Safety Policy (if you employ staff), and a suitable and sufficient accident and incident report form. If you operate from premises such as a depot, office, garage, or storage unit, fire safety documentation such as a fire risk assessment is also required.

To remove confusion and simplify the whole process, our Courier and Delivery Driver Health and Safety Template Bundle brings all essential documents together in one place. It provides a practical, cost-effective solution for courier and delivery businesses looking to improve safety, demonstrate compliance, and protect drivers, customers, and your reputation without relying on expensive consultancy support.

Having a health and safety policy is a strongly recommended best practice measure for all courier and delivery businesses, helping you set clear expectations and manage risks consistently.

If your delivery business employs five or more people, you must have a written health and safety policy. A good policy sets out your commitment to managing risks, explains roles and responsibilities, and outlines how safety is controlled within your courier or delivery operation. For couriers and delivery drivers, this commonly includes arrangements for driving for work, vehicle safety, manual handling, lone working, accident reporting, and fire safety where premises are used.

Using a professionally written Health and Safety Policy Template helps ensure your policy is clear, practical, and aligned with the way you actually work. Our templates are designed specifically for courier and delivery operations, making them easy to customise and implement across your business.

Driving for work risks should be managed through suitable risk assessments, proper planning, vehicle maintenance, driver competence, and documented safety controls.

Delivery drivers face increased risk due to long hours, fatigue, time pressure, adverse weather, distractions, and frequent stopping and reversing. Managing these risks includes realistic route planning, avoiding excessive working hours, maintaining vehicles, setting rules on mobile phone use, and ensuring drivers take adequate breaks. These controls should be clearly documented within your risk assessment and supported by practical procedures.

Our Courier and Delivery Driver Risk Assessment Template includes the key driving for work hazards faced by delivery businesses — such as fatigue, distraction, adverse weather, route pressures, reversing and manoeuvring, vehicle safety, and more — with clear, realistic control measures that help you demonstrate compliance and reduce accident risk.

Manual handling risks for delivery drivers come from lifting, carrying, pushing, and manoeuvring parcels and goods, and they should be assessed and controlled through a suitable risk assessment.

Delivery drivers often handle items of varying size and weight in awkward environments such as stairways, uneven ground, tight access routes, or poorly lit areas. Repetitive lifting, rushing between drops, unstable loads, and poor technique can lead to back injuries, muscle strains, joint damage, and long-term musculoskeletal disorders. Manual handling risks can also increase when loads are oversized, poorly packed, or need to be moved over longer distances without suitable handling aids.

Our Courier and Delivery Driver Risk Assessment Template includes manual handling hazards and realistic control measures such as assessing loads before lifting, using trolleys or dollies where available, breaking loads down into manageable sizes, avoiding lifts beyond personal capability, and allowing sufficient time to load and unload safely.

For a comprehensive compliance solution, our Courier and Delivery Driver Health and Safety Template Bundle includes supporting documents such as staff safety guidance and accident reporting forms, helping you manage manual handling risks consistently across your delivery operation.

Yes — if your courier or delivery business operates from premises, a fire risk assessment is required to identify fire hazards and put suitable controls in place.

Fire risk assessments apply to workplaces you control, such as offices, depots, garages, storage units, warehouses, workshops, and vehicle yards. Common fire hazards in courier and delivery businesses include electrical faults, battery charging areas for devices or equipment, vehicle maintenance activities, fuel and oils, heating appliances, smoking-related risks, poor housekeeping, and the storage of combustible materials such as packaging, cardboard, racking contents, and waste. Fire can spread quickly in storage and depot environments, putting staff, drivers, contractors, visitors, and neighbouring premises at risk, as well as causing major disruption to operations.

A suitable fire risk assessment helps you confirm that escape routes are safe, fire detection and warning arrangements are appropriate, fire-fighting equipment is provided and maintained where required, and staff understand evacuation procedures. It should be reviewed when layouts change, new equipment is introduced, or any fire-related incident or near miss occurs.

Our Fire Risk Assessment Template guides you through the process step by step, making it easier to identify hazards, record practical control measures, and manage fire safety responsibilities confidently. For additional fire compliance documents such as signage and supporting templates, our Essential Fire Safety Template Bundle is also available.

All accidents, incidents, and near misses involving delivery work should be recorded using a suitable accident report form and a clear reporting process.

Recording incidents properly helps courier and delivery businesses identify what went wrong and prevent it happening again. It supports investigations into common delivery risks such as vehicle collisions, reversing incidents, manual handling injuries, slips and trips at delivery locations, aggression from customers, dog attacks, and near misses at depots, warehouses, or loading bays. Capturing details consistently (what happened, where, who was involved, immediate actions taken, and any contributing factors such as fatigue, weather, or time pressure) makes it easier to spot patterns and take practical corrective action.

Good incident records also strengthen your business protection and professionalism. They help demonstrate that you take health and safety seriously, support insurance claims and client reporting where required, and provide evidence of reasonable control measures if complaints, enforcement action, or legal claims arise.

Using a consistent Accident Report Form also improves communication within the business, encourages reporting culture, and ultimately helps reduce future incidents while protecting your reputation. Our Courier and Delivery Driver Health and Safety Template Bundle includes a ready-to-use Accident Report Form, making it simple to record incidents consistently across your delivery operation.

Yes — self-employed couriers are responsible for managing health and safety risks arising from their work, especially where their actions could affect other people.

Self-employed delivery drivers still have duties to work safely and to protect customers, members of the public, and anyone else who may be affected by their activities. In practice, that means identifying and controlling foreseeable risks linked to driving for work, vehicle condition and roadworthiness, fatigue, distraction, safe parking and reversing, manual handling of parcels, slips and trips at delivery locations, lone working, aggression, and dog attacks. If you collect from depots or deliver into warehouses, you also need to follow site rules and traffic management arrangements, and take reasonable care around forklifts, loading bays, and vehicle movements.

Keeping written documentation is not just “paperwork” — it helps demonstrate professionalism, supports insurance requirements, and protects you if there is an incident, complaint, or claim. A clear risk assessment also helps you standardise the way you work, so decisions are safer and more consistent under pressure.

Our Courier and Delivery Driver Risk Assessment Template is pre-filled with industry relevant content suitable for self-employed couriers and owner-drivers, providing a practical, structure you can tailor to your business, vehicle type, routes, and delivery tasks.

Health and safety templates save time by providing structured, pre-filled documents that can be quickly customised to your delivery operation, rather than creating paperwork from scratch.

Many courier and delivery business owners struggle to keep up with compliance while managing routes, customers, vehicle upkeep, staff, and day-to-day operational pressures. Ready-made templates reduce admin time and help ensure you don’t miss key risks such as driving for work, fatigue, manual handling, lone working, vehicle safety, depot and warehouse visits, and incident reporting. They also create consistency across your business, so managers and drivers follow the same expectations and procedures, even when workloads change or you bring new people into the operation.

Using professional templates also strengthens your position with insurers, clients, and contractors by making it easier to demonstrate that risks have been assessed and controls are in place. This can help reduce repeat incidents, improve safety culture, and protect your reputation if something goes wrong.

Our Courier and Delivery Driver Health and Safety Template Bundle gives you instant access to a complete set of over 60 editable documents, including risk assessments, policies, safety guidance, accident reporting forms, fire safety documents and more, helping you stay organised, compliant, and focused on running a safe, reliable delivery business.