Duty of care is often discussed in the context of health and safety. In reality it is far broader and forms the foundation for good working relationships. It is particularly important for the screen sector, where businesses often engage in fast-paced productions and changing workplace dynamics.
This article will clarify your business’s responsibilities toward freelancers.
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 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:
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:
Under Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HASAWA), your business has a duty to ensure, as far as is ‘reasonably practicable’, that non-employees are not exposed to risks to their health and safety.
Where you make premises available to freelancers, you must ensure the premises and means of access are safe and without risks to health (section 4 of HASAWA).
You may also have liability under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 for faulty work carried out by freelancers which causes accident or injury, though this liability is limited where you can demonstrate that you acted reasonably in selecting the freelancer and took reasonable steps to ensure competence and proper completion of work.
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.
Acas produces guidance on employment matters including disciplinary procedures and managing work-related stress for employees. It is mentioned here because its risk-management steps offer a practical, non-binding framework that businesses can adapt when meeting their statutory duties to freelancers under HASAWA.
Their guidance on risk management encompasses several key obligations, including:
Your business should provide freelancers with relevant information on relevant risks, preventative and protective measures taken and give them adequate inductions or instructions.
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 HASAWA.
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:
The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) incorporates 16 basic rights (known as Articles) from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law.
For most private sector screen industry businesses, the HRA’s direct impact is limited, though ECHR rights may influence how employment tribunals interpret unfair dismissal and discrimination claims.
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 requirement to protect individuals from discrimination, harassment and victimisation under the Equality Act 2010 (EQ). 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).
The EQ protects individuals engaged under employment contracts, apprenticeships or contracts personally to do work. Freelancers engaged under a contract to personally perform work are generally protected from discrimination.
Freelancers that are contracted to personally do the work may be classified as ‘contract workers,’ granting them a legal right to similar protection from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation as your employees.
From October 2026, the Employment Rights Act 2025 raises the standard introduced by the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023. Businesses must take 'all reasonable steps' to prevent sexual harassment of their workforce, and will be directly liable if a worker is harassed by a third party, such as another freelancer, contractor or client, where those steps have not been taken. On a production with a large freelance workforce, this makes proactive risk assessment and a clear reporting route even more important.
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 vulnerable adults (the term 'adults at risk' is used in Welsh legislation, whilst the applicable English law refers to 'vulnerable adults’). 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 vulnerable adults 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.
Four examples of the nine principles:
Read the Film and TV Charity's full Principles for Mentally Healthy Productions for a complete breakdown of all nine principles and implementation guidance, here.
To uphold trust and confidence during sensitive work, businesses are increasingly engaging specialist roles:
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. It relates to day-to-day working culture, including:
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.
In May 2026, Parliament formally recognised CIISA as a 'prescribed person' for whistleblowing purposes across the film, TV, music and theatre sectors. This means freelancers who raise a concern with CIISA now benefit from statutory whistleblower protection. CIISA's first-stage Reporting Service is due to launch in September 2026; at the time of writing it is not yet operational, so businesses should continue to maintain their own internal reporting routes in the meantime.
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.
For information on your responsibilities toward employees, please see our separate article on Duty of Care: Employment in the Screen sector.
For information on your responsibilities toward children and young people, please see our separate article on Duty of Care: Employing Children and Young persons.