COMAH 2015: personnel accountability explained

COMAH 2015 implements the EU Seveso III Directive in Great Britain. It applies to establishments holding dangerous substances above defined thresholds and classifies them as lower or upper tier.

Regulation 5 requires a major-accident prevention policy (MAPP). Regulation 7 requires operators to prepare adequate internal emergency plans. Both depend on knowing, at any moment, who is on site and where — because you cannot evacuate or account for people you cannot see.

The traditional approach — assembly points and a paper register or wardens with clipboards — is slow, error-prone and hard to audit. During a real incident, people take unexpected routes, help colleagues, or are simply missed.

Regulators increasingly expect operators to demonstrate their accountability process works, not just that a plan exists on paper. A head count that takes fifteen minutes and cannot be reconstructed afterwards is a weakness.

Anchors placed across your site read every worker's Tag at gates, muster points and zone thresholds. The moment an alarm sounds, the system produces a live head count and a timestamped record of who is accounted for, who is still inside, and where they were last seen.

That record is auditable after the event — it shows exactly when each person reached safety. For a COMAH emergency plan, this turns accountability from a hopeful process into demonstrable evidence.