Free Excavation Permit Template (UK, HSE-Aligned)

HSE warns that "Every year people are killed or seriously injured by collapses and falling materials while working in excavations" (HSE, excavations), and its buried-services guidance, HSG47 (paragraph 10), says "Damage to underground services can cause fatal or severe injury". HSE lists the risk of "Excavations collapsing and burying or injuring people working in them", and notes that, depending on conditions, "a cubic metre of soil can weigh in excess of 1.5 tonnes". An excavation permit template forces a structured check before the ground is broken, covering two key hazards: what's underneath and what's holding the sides up.

This guide walks through every section an excavation permit should include and covers the practical checks that keep people alive during groundworks.

This guide provides general information based on HSE guidance. It does not constitute legal advice and is not a substitute for site-specific assessment by a competent person. Excavation work must be planned, managed and monitored under CDM 2015, and HSE's HSG47 guidance covers avoiding danger from underground services.

Legal Framework for Excavation Permits

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM) require that excavation work is planned, managed, and monitored. HSG47 is HSE's practical guidance on locating buried services. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient risk assessment.

These are Great Britain duties: CDM 2015 regulation 3 says the Regulations apply "in Great Britain". In Northern Ireland the equivalents are the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016, where regulation 21 covers excavations, and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000.

The permit-to-work is how you record that these checks have been made before digging begins. Our guide to permit-to-work systems covers the fundamentals of PTW.

An excavation permit should be used for any excavation people will enter, any excavation near buried services, work in contaminated or unknown ground, and any dig adjacent to structures where ground movement could cause instability. If you are unsure whether a permit to dig is required for a specific task — particularly near buried utilities — our permit to dig guide covers the decision criteria and when a permit to dig differs from a general excavation permit.

What Goes on an Excavation Permit (Section by Section)

Permit Header

Permit number
Date and time of issue
Valid from / valid until (one shift or one day — never open-ended)
Site name and specific location of the excavation
Description of the excavation work (dimensions, depth, purpose)
Name of permit holder and their employer
Plant and equipment to be used (excavator type, hand tools, vacuum excavator)

Buried Services Survey

This is a safety-critical section. Before any digging starts, you must establish what's in the ground:

Utility records obtained: Plans requested from all relevant utility companies via LSBUD or equivalent. Note: plans show approximate routes only.
CAT and Genny survey completed: Record the operator's name, equipment type, and date. CAT scans cannot detect all services — plastic pipes and other non-metallic services, and many telecoms cables, may not show up.
Known services identified and marked on the ground: List every service with approximate depth and route. Attach a marked-up site plan.
Safe digging method agreed: HSG47 says to dig trial holes as necessary (with suitable hand tools or vacuum excavation) to confirm the position of detected services, and to take special care when digging above or close to the assumed line of a service (paragraph 99). It sets 500 mm margins for specific situations: where practicable, keep hand-held power tools breaking up a hard surface at least 500 mm from the indicated line of a service, then locate the service by careful hand digging (paragraph 108; paragraph 109 allows the margin to be reduced only in limited circumstances); and do not use mechanical excavators within 500 mm of a gas pipe or a major hazard pipeline (paragraphs 150 and 160). If your site applies a wider hand-dig-only zone around every service, record that site rule here.

Ground Conditions Assessment

Record the soil type (clay, sand, gravel, rock, made ground), water conditions (water table evidence, groundwater ingress), adjacent structures close enough to be affected by ground movement (HSE says: "Before digging starts, decide if extra support for the structure is needed. Surveys of the foundations and the advice of a structural engineer may be required."), and recent weather. Heavy rain saturates soil and reduces stability; frost followed by thaw destabilises trench walls. Previous ground use matters too — filled ground may contain asbestos or produce methane.

Excavation Support and Edge Protection

CDM 2015 regulation 22(1) requires all practicable steps to be taken to prevent danger, "including, where necessary, the provision of supports or battering", to ensure that no excavation collapses, and it sets no depth below which support can be ignored. As HSE puts it: "No ground can be relied upon to stand unsupported in all circumstances." Record the method:

Trench sheets and hydraulic struts: Sheets placed against the trench walls and held apart by struts or props.
Trench boxes: Pre-fabricated steel boxes dragged along the trench as work progresses.
Battering: Sloping the sides back to a safe angle. HSE says that "In granular soils, the angle of slope should be less than the natural angle of repose of the material being excavated. In wet ground a considerably flatter slope will be required." The angle should be set by a competent person for the actual ground.

Edge protection: guard rails or barriers around the perimeter, stop blocks for vehicles, warning signage, and pedestrian crossing points if applicable.

Provide a safe means of getting into and out of the excavation. Where ladders are used, HSE says they "must be on a firm level base, secured to prevent slipping and, unless a suitable alternative handhold is provided, extend to a height of at least 1 m above the landing place."

Authorisation and Signatures

The permit holder confirms precautions are in place. The permit issuer confirms they are satisfied the excavation is safe to proceed. The issuer should have enough groundworks knowledge to assess whether the support method and buried services survey are adequate. Our general permit to work template explains the issue and acceptance signatures.

Inspection at the Start of Each Shift

Where supports or battering have been provided, CDM 2015 regulation 22(4) says construction work must not be carried out in the excavation unless a competent person has inspected it at the start of the shift in which the work is to be carried out, after any event likely to have affected its strength or stability, and after any material unintentionally falls or is dislodged, and is satisfied the work can be carried out safely (in Northern Ireland, CDM (NI) 2016 regulation 21(4) sets the same rule). Record the inspector's name, date, condition of support and trench walls, water ingress, and edge protection status.

Permit Close-Out

When complete: all personnel out, excavation backfilled or left with adequate protection, support removed progressively as backfilling proceeds, services confirmed undamaged, permit signed off by both parties.

Common Mistakes on Excavation Permits

Relying on utility plans alone. Plans show approximate routes. Depths can vary significantly. HSG47 says "Plans alone are not sufficient to identify and locate services before starting work" (paragraph 39), so supplement them with a survey using a detecting device (such as a CAT and Genny) and careful hand digging or vacuum excavation near services. Plans are the starting point, not the answer.

No support in shallow trenches. A shallow trench can still collapse and trap a worker's legs. CDM 2015 sets no depth below which support can be ignored, so the risk assessment should consider support at every depth, especially in loose or waterlogged ground.

Removing support before backfilling. Trench sheets and struts are removed from the bottom up as backfill is placed, not stripped out in advance. Removing support from an open trench is extremely dangerous.

Stockpiling spoil at the edge. Excavated material piled at the trench edge adds load to the ground that the trench walls are trying to support, increasing collapse risk. Keep spoil at least 1 metre from the edge, and further in poor ground.

No emergency plan for cable strikes. If a buried cable is struck, the operator should stay in the cab (if in a machine) or move away without touching the cable (if on foot). HSG47 (paragraph 101) adds that "no one should go into the excavation or approach the excavator or the cable until the cable owner has made the damaged cable safe". The permit should record the emergency procedure and ensure everyone on site knows it.

Paper vs Digital Excavation Permits

Excavation permits involve a lot of specific data — service routes, CAT survey results, support specifications, inspection logs. On paper, this information is spread across multiple forms and can be hard to cross-reference. A digital system can link the permit to the buried services plan, attach photos of the CAT survey results, and prompt the start-of-shift inspection automatically.

PermitPad is building a digital excavation permit with structured service identification fields, start-of-shift inspection prompts, and photo capture for ground conditions. Join the waitlist to try it when we launch.

Key References

Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 — CDM duties for excavation work
HSG47 — Avoiding danger from underground services (HSE)
Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 — risk assessment requirements
HSG250 — Guidance on permit-to-work systems (HSE)
HSE: Excavations — HSE construction guidance on collapse, support, battering, nearby structures and access

What to Do Now

If your team carries out excavation work, start with the template structure above and adapt it to your typical sites. The non-negotiables are the buried services survey, adequate support, and inspections at the start of each shift. Everything else is secondary.

For a quick check of your broader permit system, try the free PTW readiness checker. The safety checklist generator does not yet include excavation, so use the section headings above as your dig checklist; it can build a printable pre-start checklist for any hot work, confined space entry, working at height or electrical isolation alongside the dig.