UK law does not specify a single item that must be in your workplace first aid kit. The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 require equipment that is “adequate and appropriate in the circumstances” — and then leave the circumstances to you. There is no legally mandated contents list, no legal minimum number of plasters, and no requirement to buy any particular branded box.
What there is, is a British Standard that everyone has quietly agreed to treat as the benchmark, and an enforcement reality where “adequate and appropriate” gets judged against it.
What the law actually says
Regulation 3 of the 1981 Regulations requires the employer to provide adequate and appropriate equipment, facilities and personnel. The equipment element is deliberately open-ended, because a chemical plant and a small accountancy office genuinely do not need the same box.
The output of your first-aid needs assessment determines what adequate means for you. If you have not done that assessment, you cannot know whether your kit is compliant — you are guessing. See what first aid training you actually need for how the assessment drives everything else.
BS 8599-1 — the standard everyone uses
BS 8599-1 is the British Standard for workplace first aid kit contents. It is not legally mandatory. You can assemble a compliant kit without ever buying a BS 8599-1 box.
In practice, most employers use it because it is the easiest way to demonstrate “adequate and appropriate” to an inspector or an insurer, and because it removes the guesswork. Kits are sold in sizes — commonly Small, Medium and Large, plus travel and motoring variants — matched to headcount and risk level.
The broad logic: low-hazard workplaces (offices, shops, libraries) need smaller kits per head; higher-hazard workplaces (construction, manufacturing, warehousing, food processing with sharp equipment) need larger kits, more of them, and more of the trauma items.
If you use a non-standard kit, be ready to explain how you decided its contents. “It came with the building” is not an explanation.
What a workplace kit typically contains
Common contents across BS 8599-1 kits:
- Guidance leaflet — the basic advice card
- Sterile adhesive dressings (plasters) — blue detectable in food environments
- Sterile eye pads
- Triangular bandages, individually wrapped
- Safety pins
- Sterile wound dressings in assorted sizes
- Disposable gloves — nitrile, since latex allergy is common
- Sterile saline or eye wash, where mains water is not readily available
- Adhesive tape
- Shears or scissors
- Foil blanket
- Burn dressing
- Resuscitation face shield
- Conforming bandages
- Finger dressings
What must NOT be in it
This is the rule most often broken, usually with good intentions.
Do not keep medication in a workplace first aid kit. No paracetamol, no ibuprofen, no antihistamines, no antiseptic creams. First aiders are not trained or authorised to administer medicines, allergies and interactions are unknown, and a well-meant painkiller can cause serious harm.
The common exception people ask about is aspirin for a suspected heart attack — that is administered on the instruction of the emergency services, not offered from the box on a first aider’s own judgement.
Also keep out: out-of-date items, loose unwrapped dressings, and anything that has been opened and put back.
How many kits, and where
Location matters as much as contents. A single excellent kit locked in a manager’s office at the far end of the site is not adequate provision.
- Within reasonable reach of the work — minutes matter for serious bleeding
- One per floor, per building, per remote area, as the layout requires
- Accessible without a key during all working hours, including shifts when the office is locked
- Clearly signed — a white cross on green, and staff who actually know where it is
- In vehicles where staff drive for work, and with lone workers and mobile teams
A useful test: ask someone on the shop floor where the nearest kit is. If they hesitate, the signage or the induction is not working.
Checking and restocking
There is no legally specified inspection interval. Monthly is the common convention and is easy to defend.
A workable check covers:
- Everything present against the contents list
- Nothing out of date — sterile items and eye wash all carry expiry dates
- Seals and packaging intact
- Nothing improvised, opened or returned
- The check recorded, dated and signed
Record the check. An unrecorded inspection is indistinguishable from no inspection when someone asks six months later. This is the same principle that applies across health and safety documentation — see risk assessment records.
Eye wash, first aid rooms and defibrillators
Eye wash
Where mains tap water is not readily available and there is a risk of eye contamination, sterile eye wash should be provided. Check expiry dates — this is the item most often found years out of date.
First aid rooms
A dedicated first aid room is not required for most workplaces. Higher-hazard sites and larger premises may need one, based on the needs assessment. Where provided, it should be easily accessible to stretchers, clearly signed, and kept clean and available for first aid use rather than quietly becoming a store cupboard.
Defibrillators (AEDs)
There is no general legal requirement to provide an AED. Many employers choose to, and the needs assessment may point that way where there are large numbers of people, public access, physically demanding work, or a long ambulance response time.
Where you do have one: keep it maintained, keep the pads in date, make sure people know where it is, and register it with the national defibrillator network so ambulance services can direct callers to it. An AED nobody can find is not an asset.
Modern AEDs are designed to be used by untrained bystanders and talk the user through each step. Familiarity still helps — see our Basic Life Support course.
Recording incidents
Separate from the kit, but part of the same system:
- An accident book or equivalent record. Entries contain personal data, so they must be stored in line with UK GDPR — not left open on a shelf.
- RIDDOR reporting for specified injuries, over-seven-day incapacitation, occupational diseases and dangerous occurrences. Reportable events go to HSE within the required timeframes.
- Review after incidents. If the kit was short of something when it mattered, that is a finding, not an inconvenience.
Six failures found at inspection
- Out-of-date sterile items — especially eye wash and burn dressings.
- Painkillers in the box. Well-intentioned, still wrong.
- Kit locked away or behind a door only day staff can open.
- No record of checks, so no way to show the kit has been maintained.
- Contents raided for everyday use — the plasters go first, the gloves next.
- One kit for a multi-floor or multi-building site, with no assessment justifying it.
Further reading
First aid awareness training
Our Workplace First Aid course covers how workplace first aid provision fits together — the duties, the roles, and what to do in the first moments. Also: Basic Life Support · Anaphylaxis Awareness · Paediatric First Aid
Related reading: What first aid training do you actually need? · Risk assessment: what UK law requires
£9 per course. CPD accredited, 100 % online, verifiable e-certificate on completion. Pay for 2, get 3 — any 3 courses for £18.
Important: this is a CPD-accredited awareness course and general information — not medical advice, and not a substitute for practical first aid training. It is not an Ofqual-regulated qualification and it does not make you a workplace first aider. FAW and EFAW qualifications require an in-person practical element assessed by a competent trainer and cannot be obtained online. In an emergency, call 999.