How Long Is a First Aid at Work Certificate Valid in the UK?
First Aid at Work (FAW) certificate
Three years from the date of issue. Requalify before it expires to get another three.
"Certificates for the purposes of first aid at work last for three years. Before their certificates expire, first-aiders will need to undertake a requalification course as appropriate, to obtain another three-year certificate."
Renewal, refreshers, and what a lapse means
- Who it applies to
- First aiders appointed under the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981, in workplaces whose needs assessment calls for a first aider rather than only an appointed person.
- How it is renewed
- A requalification course, shorter than the original three-day course, taken before the current certificate expires. Completing it issues a new three-year certificate.
- Refresher training in between
- HSE strongly recommends annual refresher training inside the three years, to keep basic skills current and pick up procedure changes. It is a recommendation, not a requirement, and it does not extend the certificate.
- When it lapses
- Once the certificate expires the holder is no longer considered competent to act as a workplace first aider. They drop out of your first-aid provision on the expiry date, not when someone notices.
Renewal reminders for your calendar
Enter the date and this page builds a calendar file with the expiry date and reminders 90 days and 30 days before it. Nothing leaves your browser; the file is generated here and opens in Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar.
What this does to the roster
Three years is long enough to forget. The person who did the course in the first month of a job is, by the time it expires, the person everyone assumes is covered, and nothing on the roster changes on the day the certificate runs out. The HSE line is blunt about what that day means: after expiry the holder is no longer considered competent to act as a workplace first aider. So a site with two first aiders and one lapsed certificate is a site with one first aider, which in the presence arithmetic is short on about 33 working days a year rather than 4.2.
The requalification has to happen before expiry, and the course has to be booked, which means the practical window is the last two or three months of the certificate, not the last week. HSE also strongly recommends annual refresher training inside the three years. A refresher does not extend the certificate, but the teams that do it rarely let the certificate lapse, because the date is in front of someone every year instead of once every three.
The roster consequence is the one worth planning for: the certificate is held by a person, but the cover is needed by a shift. Record the expiry date where the rota is built, set the reminders a quarter out, and count first aiders by valid certificate rather than by who once did the course. The qualified cover pages linked below work out how many valid holders a team of a given size needs for one to be present on an ordinary day.
How many holders does that take?
Validity says whether a certificate counts today. The next question is how many valid holders the operation needs so that the required number is actually on shift once leave, sickness and the occasional lapse are priced in.
One trained first aider in a team of 8 leaves the site uncovered on about 33 working days a year. A second takes that to 4.2.
How Many First Aiders Does a Team of 15 Need?Two first aiders in a team of 15 leave the site without one on about 4.2 working days a year. A third brings it to 0.5.
How Many First Aiders Does a Team of 40 Need for Two on Site?Four first aiders in a team of 40 keep two on site on all but about 1.9 working days a year. Three would leave it short on 11.5.
Common questions
- How long is an FAW certificate valid?
- Three years from the date of issue, per HSE. Before it expires the first aider needs to complete a requalification course to obtain another three-year certificate. After expiry they are no longer considered competent to act as a workplace first aider.
- Does the annual refresher extend the certificate?
- No. HSE strongly recommends annual refresher training to keep skills current, but the certificate still runs for three years from issue and is only renewed by a requalification course. The refresher is about competence between renewals, not about the date.
- What happens if the certificate lapses?
- The holder stops counting as a workplace first aider from the expiry date. If your needs assessment requires a first aider on site, a lapsed certificate is a gap until the requalification is done, and a team that believed it had two holders is running on one.
This page summarises the cited source as read on 2026-08-19. Rules change and needs assessments differ; check the source for your own case. Keeping each person's expiry date on the record that builds the rota is what the Skills tab in Soon is for.
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