Health, safety and equality.

Your right to a safe workplace

Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 your employer must protect your health, safety and welfare. That includes a safe place to work, safe equipment, training before you use anything that could hurt you, protective equipment where it is needed, and knowing what to do in an emergency.

Before your apprenticeship started, your provider checked your employer's health and safety arrangements, and it keeps checking during reviews. If you are under 18, your employer must also think specifically about the risks to a young person and tell your parent or carer about them.

You have duties too: follow the training and instructions you are given, use equipment properly, and tell someone if you spot a danger.

If something at work feels unsafe

1. Stop, if you can do so safely. You are allowed to refuse to do something you have not been trained for or that you believe is dangerous.
2. Tell your supervisor or manager straight away. Most problems are fixed at this point.
3. Tell your provider if it is not fixed, or if you do not feel able to raise it at work. Your learner coordinator can take it up with your employer. You can also raise it in your next review, or through Raise a concern to directors on your learner home page.
4. Report an accident to your employer and your provider, even a small one, so it is recorded and cannot happen to someone else.
5. For serious concerns that are not being dealt with, you can contact the Health and Safety Executive at hse.gov.uk. In an emergency call 999.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

The Equality Act 2010 protects you from being treated worse because of a protected characteristic: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

That protection covers recruitment, pay, training, promotion, how you are managed and how you are treated day to day, at work and at your provider. It also means your employer and provider must make reasonable adjustments if you have a disability.

Discrimination, bullying and harassment are never acceptable. Not from a manager, a colleague, a customer, a tutor or another apprentice. Not in person, not online, not "as a joke".

• Discrimination is being treated worse because of a protected characteristic, or a rule that puts people with that characteristic at a disadvantage without a good reason.
• Harassment is unwanted behaviour linked to a protected characteristic that violates your dignity or creates a hostile, humiliating or offensive environment. Sexual harassment is any unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature.
• Bullying is repeated behaviour intended to hurt, intimidate or undermine someone, whether or not it is linked to a protected characteristic.

How to report it

1. If you feel able to, tell the person to stop. You do not have to.
2. Keep a note of what happened, when, and who was there. Save messages.
3. Tell your manager, or if the problem is your manager, someone more senior or HR at your employer.
4. Tell your tutor, learner coordinator or the safeguarding lead at your provider. Your provider will act on it whether it happened at work or at the provider, and can raise it with your employer for you.
5. Use Raise a concern to directors in Journey if you want it to go straight to the people who run your provider.

You will not be treated worse for reporting. For advice on your rights, contact Acas on 0300 123 1100 or the Equality Advisory and Support Service on 0808 800 0082.

Last reviewed 2026-09-08. See also Safeguarding and Prevent and British values.