2025 Chief Adjudicator's Report

Organisations were provided with online ‘easy-to-access’ aides to assist them in the preparation and submission of their award applications. These included:

• The 2025 International Safety Awards question set and marking scheme
• The Chief Adjudicator’s Report for the 2024 International Safety Awards
• A guidance note concerning the eligibility requirements
• The list of 2024 ISA winners; and
• Details of webinars hosted by British Safety Council in October 2024 and January 2025.

The webinars hosted by British Safety Council staff, the Chief Adjudicator and the award scheme’s Independent Adjudicator were well attended. The purpose of the webinars was to assist applicants by addressing and answering their queries and helping their understanding of how best to provide the evidence necessary to achieve high marks.

The importance of applicants accessing and understanding the ISA eligibility requirements as set out in the regulations, guidance and advice listed cannot be overstated. Closely following the regulations, guidance and advice provided is key to a successful ISA application.

We asked applicants to provide details of any accidents, incidents or occurrences that had taken place at their site in 2024 and details of any regulatory sanctions that were imposed. This information is vital to the adjudication process and has a bearing on how adjudicators judge the effectiveness of the applicant organisation in ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of its workforce in 2024. Had enforcement action been taken in the relevant eligibility period it is for the adjudicators to decide whether any resulting remedial action is sufficient to allow the application to proceed to adjudication.

We cannot overstate the importance of reading and understanding the questions. Low scores in many cases resulted from an incomplete reading or misunderstanding of what was being sought.

Presentation is all important. For example, applicants who provided long lists of arrangements in place or actions taken without explanation of ‘how, why and to what effect’ were marked down. The use of informative headings, subheadings and paragraphs are a valuable tool in enabling adjudicators to gauge how well the applicant has addressed the core elements of the question. However, it is not enough to simply cut and paste from policy or procedure manuals without tailoring answers to the specific site and its practices, and/or excluding superfluous information.

For ISA 2025 we departed from the format of previous years by eliminating the part b) questions requesting the attachment of supplementary evidence, each of which attracted just one additional mark. This time, the evidence required had to be provided in a textual form with a limit of 600 words for the answers to each question.

Supplementary marks continued to be awarded to applicants who had successfully been certified by British Safety Council under the Five Star Audit scheme or to ISO 45001 in the relevant qualifying period.

In our ISA webinars we advised applicants to draft answers in a separate word document before transferring to the online application. It is essential that all answers are proofread and ideally peer reviewed by a colleague before the application is submitted. The time taken to do so is time well spent as it can result in the extra marks that make the difference, for example, between a Pass and a Merit or a Merit and a Distinction.

British Safety Council, the Chief Adjudicator and the Independent Adjudicator are aware that in a small number of applications AI had been used to generate answers. This resulted in formulaic, theoretical, textbook answers that provided the adjudicators with little sense of how health, safety and wellbeing was being managed effectively at the applicant’s site. Going forward ISA will be putting further measures in place to identify answers generated by AI or search engines and marking down such applications accordingly.

We understand that where there have been multiple applications for different sites from within one organisation there will be instances where identical text will be used when answering specific questions, for example, regarding management systems, audit arrangements and training and development activities. While this is permissible, it is essential that applicants, wherever required, provide evidence that is site specific and tailor their answers as appropriate.

Applicants who provided too short answers inevitably failed to provide the evidence necessary to score more than one mark. We advise applicants to make full use of the 600-word limit, where necessary, to ensure that the adjudicator marking that application understands the ‘what, why, how and to what effect’ of the actions and arrangements that are central to answering that question successfully.

To read more download the full report.