Broadly, duty of care is your business’s moral and legal responsibility to protect the safety, health, and wellbeing of those involved in your activities.  

The Implied Duties Gap 

Unlike in employment contracts, implied duties, such as trust and confidence do not automatically apply to freelancers. This creates a gap in protection, where freelancers lack the same grounds to claim for unfair treatment or constructive dismissal. 

Because of this gap, express terms (i.e., the specific clauses written into your contracts), are of vital importance. Protections can often start and end with what is explicitly written on the page. 

To bridge the gap, industry standards like CIISA and the Film and TV Charity Principles act as a cultural equivalent, ensuring that even without a traditional employment contract, non-employees are protected by the same standards of respect and mental wellbeing as employees.  

Legal Claims and Duty of Care 

A breach of your duties will often arise though legal routes, such as: 

• discrimination or harassment claims 

• breach of contract  

• health and safety detriment claims 

• negligence claims 

While freelancers do not have the same statutory grievance rights as employees, your business should have a clear complaints procedure, and engage with any concerns in a timely, fair and transparent way.  

Your business should provide:  

• clear reporting pathways; 

• fair complaints process; and  

• appropriate communication and support. 

Under Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA), your business has a duty to ensure that, as far as is ‘reasonably practicable’, that non-employees are not exposed to risks to their health and safety.  

The Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 (the Regulations) help provide further context to your business’s duties under HSWA.  

Under the Regulations, a key duty is to carry out ‘suitable and sufficient’ risk assessments of the risks of health and safety for non-employees. While genuinely self-employed individuals do their own risk assessments, your business is responsible for the safety of the environment that you bring them into.   

In their guidance, Acas describes that a business’s responsibility for risk management encompasses several key obligations, including:  

• Identifying risks 

• Deciding how to remove or reduce risks 

• Keeping records of risks and associated decisions  

• Regularly reviewing the risks 

• Following a health and safety policy  

Although Acas is often associated with employees, their risk management steps are the industry benchmark for meeting your legal duties to freelancers.  

Your business also has a duty to provide freelancers with relevant information on relevant risks; preventative and protective measures taken and give them adequate inductions or instructions.   

Your business must, as far is reasonably practicable:  

• provide a safe and suitable working environment (including safe systems); 

• carry out risk assessments and act on findings; 

• ensure health and safety policies and procedures are understood and followed; and 

• provide suitable instructions and competent supervision; 

Importantly, duty of care is not limited to physical safety. The duty to provide a safe workplace is not limited to accidents or equipment.  

Psychological safety and dignity at work are equally as central to your duties, and therefore stress and welfare must be included in your health and safety risk assessments under HSWA.  

For example, requiring a freelance editor to meet an impossible deadline via 20-hour shifts may constitute a breach of your duty to protect their health.  

To inform your risk assessments, the Health and Safety Executive has identified six Management Standards designed to address causes of stress at work and encourage good practice: 

• Demands: workload, patterns and environment 

• Control: control over how freelancers work 

• Support: encouragement and resources 

• Relationships: positive working relationships 

• Role: role clarity and potential conflicts 

• Change: management and communication  

The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates 16 basic rights (known as Articles) from the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law.  

These Articles function as the ethical and legal foundation of a business’s duty of care. While your specific policies may focus on health and safety or equality, these 16 rights define the minimum standard of treatment required to protect an individual’s dignity, privacy, and autonomy.  

By ensuring these rights are respected, your business meets its broader obligation to provide a working environment that is not only safe but fundamentally respectful of the person. 

See our e-learning module: Human Rights And The Screen Industries

Underpinning your duty of care is a strict legal requirement to protect individuals from discrimination, harassment and victimisation under the Equality Act 2010. This means not treating them differently because of a protected characteristic and making reasonable adjustments for individuals with disabilities (i.e., modifying set access or call times).   

Freelancers that are contracted to personally do the work are classified as ‘contract workers,’ granting them a legal right to the same protection from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation as your employees. 

These duties extend to the collective behaviour of the workforce. While a business is generally not vicariously liable for the acts of a freelancer, it remains liable for the actions of its own employees toward that freelancer. For example, a failure to take appropriate and reasonable steps to prevent or address workplace discrimination of a freelancer could amount to a serious breach of duty. 

Your business should implement clear policies and procedures which serve to establish a preventative and zero-tolerance culture. 

Duty of care specifically extends to Adults at Risk. These are individuals who may have care and support needs (such as a physical or mental disability) that make them more vulnerable to harm or abuse.  

To manage these specific risks, your business should appoint a Designated Safeguarding Officer (DSO) to lead on safeguarding policies, ensuring that Adults at Risk are identified and protected.  

The Film and TV Charity in collaboration with over 45 organisations has introduced a set of nine core principles and corresponding action points designed to mitigate the startling mental health realities of the screen sector.  

This shift from reactive to proactive is the core of how modern duty of care should be interpreted going forward.  

The 9 Principles at a Glance:  

• Planning & Recruitment: Setting realistic, schedules, and onboarding processes to prevent systemic overwork. 

• Leadership & Culture: Ensuring senior management leads wellbeing strategies and foster an open, zero-tolerance environment.  

• On-Set Support: Actively managing workloads, signposting professional resources, and assessing the impact of sensitive or traumatic content. 

• Review & Accountability: Conducting post-wrap debriefs to ensure lessons are learned for the next production. 

A complete breakdown of the principles and implementation guidance, you can access the full guide here. 

To uphold trust and confidence during sensitive work, businesses are increasingly engaging specialist roles: 

• Intimacy Coordinators: Mandatory for many broadcasters when filming scenes involving nudity or simulated sex. They ensure informed consent is maintained and that boundaries are respected.  

• Wellbeing Facilitators: This role provides a neutral point of contact, helping to mediate low-level conflict.  

Screen work creates distinctive challenges, including long hours, demanding schedules, hierarchical production structures and rapidly changing teams and locations.  

Duty of care extends beyond compliance and relates to day-to-day working culture, including:  

• workload and fatigue management  

• fair and respectful management practices  

• effective handling of complaints and concerns 

Remember: industry norms must not override legal responsibilities. 

Duty of care obligations and the CIISA Standards are closely connected. Applying these duties in day-to-day working practices helps your business build a safer and more respectful workplace, supported by open and accountable reporting mechanisms and a culture that responds appropriately to concerns. Your business plays an important role in shaping the future of the screen sector through the standards you set, the culture you foster and the working environment you create.  

Duty of care is demonstrated through systems, behaviours, and decision-making. Importantly, your business’s policies and procedures should function as working tools that guide conduct and support consistent practice.  

To support your policies and procedures, training schemes such as the Bectu Creative Industries Safety Passport (CRISP) encourage consistent safety awareness across freelance workforces in the screen sector. 

At Workwise, we have lots of policies and procedures to help you understand and apply your business’s duties in practice!