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Do Subcontractors Need Their Own RAMS? A Plain-English Guide

Last reviewed: 18 February 2026

Yes. If you're a subcontractor working on a construction project in the UK, you almost certainly need your own RAMS (Risk Assessment and Method Statement). This isn't optional good practice — it's a legal duty. Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015), every contractor on a project, including subcontractors, has specific health and safety responsibilities. And under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR 1999), every employer and self-employed person must carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for their work activities. Full stop.

The short version: if someone's paying you to do work on a construction site, you need RAMS that cover your specific scope.

The Legal Basis: CDM 2015 Regulation 15

CDM 2015 applies to all construction work in the UK, regardless of project size. Regulation 15 sets out the duties of contractors — and that includes subcontractors. You must:

  • Plan, manage, and monitor your own work so it's carried out without risk to health and safety (so far as is reasonably practicable)
  • Not start work on site unless you're satisfied that appropriate welfare facilities are in place
  • Provide information and instruction to your workers, including site induction where needed

Nowhere in the regulations does it say "unless the principal contractor has done a RAMS for you." The principal contractor has their own coordination obligations, but that doesn't replace your responsibility to assess the risks of your own trade activities.

Separately, Regulation 3 of the MHSWR 1999 requires every employer and self-employed person to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment. This applies whether you're on a massive commercial build or fitting a kitchen in a semi-detached.

When You Definitely Need Your Own RAMS

There's no grey area in these situations:

  • The principal contractor asks for them. On any notifiable project (more than 30 working days with 20+ workers, or exceeding 500 person-days), the principal contractor will require your RAMS before you set foot on site. Many won't issue a site pass without them.
  • You're working on a multi-contractor site. If there's more than one contractor, a principal contractor must be appointed under CDM 2015. They need your RAMS to coordinate work and make sure one trade's activities don't create risks for another.
  • Your trade involves specific hazards. Working at height, hot works, confined spaces, electrical work, asbestos, demolition — if your scope involves any of these, your risk assessment needs to address them in detail. Generic site-level RAMS won't cover the specifics of what you're doing.
  • You employ or supervise others. If you have even one labourer or apprentice working with you, you have employer duties. RAMS are how you demonstrate you've thought about the risks they'll face.

For a deeper look at what goes into a solid risk assessment, have a read of our risk assessment template guide for construction.

When You Might Rely on the Principal Contractor's RAMS

There are limited situations where you might not produce a full standalone RAMS document:

  • Very small domestic jobs where you're the only contractor — fitting a bathroom, rewiring a house. There's no principal contractor, no construction phase plan required, and the scale is small.

But even here, you still need a risk assessment under MHSWR 1999 Regulation 3. You can't just wing it. On a small domestic job, your risk assessment might be simpler than a full method statement with permit-to-work references — but it still needs to exist.

Even on small jobs, having proper RAMS puts you ahead. If a client asks and you can hand something over in five minutes, that's the difference between getting the job and getting passed over.

What Happens If You Don't Have RAMS

Turning up to site without RAMS isn't just embarrassing — it has real consequences:

  • Denied site access. The principal contractor can (and regularly does) turn you away at the gate if your paperwork isn't in order. That's a wasted day and a dent in your reputation.
  • Contract termination. Many subcontract agreements require CDM 2015 compliance. No RAMS means you're in breach, and the main contractor can terminate your appointment.
  • HSE enforcement action. If the Health and Safety Executive finds subcontractors working without risk assessments, they can issue improvement notices, prohibition notices, or prosecute. Fines aren't capped in the Crown Court and are assessed against turnover — not profit. See our analysis of recent HSE construction fines for specific cases.
  • Personal liability. If someone gets hurt and you can't show you assessed the risks and planned the work safely, you're personally exposed. Sole traders and directors have been prosecuted and jailed for this.

None of this is theoretical. The HSE publishes enforcement data regularly, and missing risk assessments are one of the most common findings on site inspections.

What Your RAMS Should Actually Cover

Here's where a lot of subcontractors go wrong: they download a generic template, swap in their company name, and call it done. That gives a false sense of security without actually addressing the risks on your specific job.

Your RAMS need to be site-specific. That means they reflect:

  • The actual site conditions (access, ground conditions, proximity to live services, occupied areas)
  • The specific tasks you'll be carrying out on this project
  • The plant and equipment you'll be using
  • How your work interfaces with other trades on site
  • The control measures you'll actually put in place — not ones copied from a textbook

If your RAMS read the same for every job, they're not doing their job.

Not sure whether your project triggers formal RAMS requirements? Use our RAMS requirements checker tool to find out in a couple of minutes.

Quick Checklist: What to Include in Subcontractor RAMS

Every RAMS document you produce should cover:

  • Project details — site address, client, principal contractor, your contract scope
  • Task descriptions — what you're actually doing, step by step
  • Hazard identification — what could go wrong at each stage
  • Risk ratings — likelihood and severity, before and after controls
  • Control measures — specific actions to reduce each risk (PPE is the last resort, not the first line of defence)
  • Emergency procedures — what to do if things go sideways, who to contact
  • COSHH assessments — if you're using any hazardous substances (adhesives, solvents, dust-generating materials)
  • Permit-to-work requirements — hot works, confined space entry, electrical isolation
  • Signatures and dates — who prepared it, who reviewed it, when it was last updated
  • Communication record — evidence your workers have read and understood the RAMS

Getting Your RAMS Sorted Without the Headache

Writing RAMS from scratch for every job is tedious. Copying and pasting from old documents means details from a different site end up baked into your current paperwork. Neither option is great.

That's exactly the problem TradeRAMS is built to solve — a RAMS generator for UK tradespeople. You answer questions about your actual job, and it produces site-specific, CDM-compliant documents you can hand over with confidence.

We're opening access to tradespeople in stages. Join the TradeRAMS waitlist at traderams.co.uk and you'll be first in line when it goes live.

Your RAMS are your responsibility. Might as well make them easy to get right.