What Are the Three Risk Categories for Lone Working?

Most lone-working frameworks group risk into three broad categories, often called the PET model - People, Environment and Task - per guidance from bodies including the British Safety Council:

• People risk - the specific patient, client or situation, including any known history of aggression or unpredictable behaviour
• Environment risk - where the work happens: a patient's home, an unfamiliar area, poor lighting or mobile signal
• Task risk - what the worker is actually doing, and whether it involves handling money, medication, or providing intimate personal care

A proper risk assessment looks at all three together, not just one - a low-risk task in a high-risk environment is still high-risk overall, and vice versa. This is exactly why generic lone-working advice ("carry a phone, tell someone where you are") only ever covers one category and leaves the other two unaddressed - which is why our Lone Worker Safety course builds in all three rather than defaulting to the easiest one to write on a poster. It's worth being clear on the legal requirement behind lone working risk assessments too, since it doesn't sit in any standalone lone working law.

For the full syllabus behind this model, see Stand2's core lone working training course.