Do sole traders actually need a written risk assessment?
The short answer is yes, more often than people think. The long answer is what actually protects you if something goes wrong.
The legal bit, kept short
Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, if you employ five or more people, a written risk assessment is a legal requirement, full stop. Below five people — including a sole trader working alone — the law doesn't demand it's written down. But here's the catch: you still have to have done one, in your head or otherwise, under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The only thing that changes below five people is whether you're required to prove it.
Why "not legally required to write it down" is the wrong thing to relax about
If nothing ever goes wrong, nobody ever asks. But if something does — an injury, a complaint, an inspection — the question isn't "did you think about it," it's "can you show me." A risk assessment that only ever existed in your head is indistinguishable, to an inspector or an insurer, from one that never happened at all. Written proof is what turns "I was careful" into something you can actually stand behind.
What a proper one actually contains
A real risk assessment isn't a form you fill in once and forget — it identifies the hazards specific to what you actually do, who's at risk and how, what you're already doing to control it, what further action is needed, and when it gets reviewed.
What a regulator actually wants to see if they ask
Not perfection — proportion. A one-person stall selling baked goods doesn't need the same depth of paperwork as a unit running gas equipment or power tools. What inspectors are actually checking for is whether the assessment matches the real risks of the real business, and whether it's been looked at recently enough to still be true.
This is the exact format — hazard identification, control measures, review points — built the way a regulator actually wants to see it, in the Risk Assessment Kit.