First Aider Calculator
How many first aiders to train and at what level. Holiday and sickness cover is built in, because one trained person is no cover at all.
Built on HSE L74, the Approved Code of Practice under the First Aid Regulations 1981. The needs assessment is yours. This gets you to a sensible number.
Total number of employees typically present.
Lower hazard: typical offices, retail, light commercial. Higher hazard: industrial, construction, machinery, chemicals, significant manual handling.
How this works
The calculator is built on the needs-assessment framework set out in HSE publication L74. Lower-hazard environments take EFAW with roughly one trained person per fifty employees as a starting point; higher-hazard environments take FAW with proportionally greater coverage. The starting ratios are then adjusted for layout (multi-floor and multi-site sites need redundancy), distance from emergency medical services (rural locations need more cover to compensate for slower ambulance response), and public access (premises serving the public may need to respond to non-employee incidents).
The calculator does not factor in specific industry guidance (for example, construction sites have specific provisions under CDM 2015), vulnerable workers, or insurer-specific requirements. Treat the output as a starting point for a documented needs assessment, not a substitute for one.