It’s an unfortunate fact of life that health & safety is not a “regulated” profession, which means that anybody can set themselves up as a “health & safety consultant” irrespective of whether they have any formal qualifications in the subject, carry professional indemnity insurance, or are subject to any professional code of conduct. And all of these criteria, of course, carry with them associated costs.
Our advice to potential clients is this: by all means shop around, because that’s the prudent thing to do, but if you’re going to choose your consultant purely on the basis of lowest price then the maxim of “caveat emptor” should apply. Or, translated (very) loosely, “if it looks too good to be true then it probably IS too good to be true”!