- Health and Safety Policy
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The University Health and Safety Policy requires that:
- Each School/Support Service must produce its own Health and Safety Policy to supplement the University's Policy
- The Policy must be signed and dated by the Head of School/ Support Service
- The Policy must be reviewed annually and records of the review retained
- The Policy must be communicated to all staff and students in the School/Support Service.
- Risk Assessment
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It is a legal requirement for the University to undertake and record risk assessments to protect its staff, students and others from harm. As a minimum the University must identify what could cause injury or illness, decide how likely it is that some could be harmed and how seriously and take action to eliminate the hazard, or if this isn't possible, control the risk. The Health, Safety and Resilience team has developed guidance and accompanying documentation to assist Schools and Professional Support Directorates, and these can be found below:
- HS-GN-003 - Risk Assessment Guidance
- HS-SF-001 - Risk Assessment Template
- HS-SF-001 - Risk Assessment Form
- HS-SF-020 - Action Plan Template
- HS-SF-022 - Risk Assessment Checklist
- HS-SF-021 - Risk Register Template
- HS-SF-033 - Stress Risk Assessment and Management Action Plan template
- Risk Assessment for Business Travel Template
- Risk Assessment for Business Travel in the UK
- Risk Assessment for Business Travel Outside the UK
- Training Records
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The health and safety training needs of all members of staff and students should be identified and appropriate training provided. Records of training should be kept and these should contain an explicit acknowledgement from trainees that training has been received and understood.
- Records Retention
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The Records Retention Schedule is an index to different types of records, detailing how long they should be kept for, according to legal, regulatory, or operational requirements.
For information on what Health and Safety records you should be keeping, and for how long, please see the Health and Safety Records Retention Schedule on the Records Management page on StaffNet
- Inspections
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The purpose of a health and safety inspection is to find out whether the arrangements which the local health and safety policy requires to be in place are actually in place and whether staff and students in the School or Support Service are doing what the policy requires of them.
An inspection should be much more than an examination of the physical workplace. It should look at what people are doing and it should also look at any written records which are required to be kept.
A report on an inspection should include not only details of what is wrong and needs improvement but also details of what is right and in full accordance with the requirements of the policy.
Reports should be produced principally for the Head of School or Support Service and should be one of the means by which he/she is informed about health and safety performance in the School/Support Service.
Following the issuing of a report, actions should be agreed with the Head of School/Support Service to remedy any deficiencies.
The main activities of the School are based in offices and teaching rooms on campus. There are also some trips for students to off-campus locations
The health and safety issues here are relatively straightforward ones Schools with a wider range of activities will clearly need to produce more detailed reports which cover the full range of their activities.
They may however choose to limit the scope of individual inspections to particular matters and cover the full range of activities over several inspections. If the scope of an inspection is limited, this should be clearly stated in the report on the inspection.
- The report is just an example.
- The format is not prescriptive.
- The findings of an inspection can be documented in many different ways.
- Some Schools/Support Services may wish to produce briefer reports consisting of bullet points and short notes rather than a narrative.
- Some may choose simply to make notes on a pre-prepared checklist.
However the key points for any report are:
- Find out if the requirements of the local health and safety policy are being met;
- Note what is right as well as what is wrong;
- Go beyond a physical examination of the workplace;
- look at records and find out if people are doing what they should be doing;
- Agree any remedial actions which are required.
- Contractors
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When a contractor comes to carry out work at the University, both the contractor and the University have responsibilities for the health and safety aspects of the work.