Health and safety

This resource is for voluntary and community groups who want to make sure that they are following the law, and to ensure the safety of staff, volunteers and beneficiaries.

This page has two parts:

Part 1 gives some background guidance and lists some resources to help you consider what is most appropriate for your organisation. Part 2 is a template policy for your organisation to customise and use, with accompanying removable notes to guide you.

Part 1: Developing your policy

What is Health and Safety?

Health and safety for charities, community groups and other nonprofit organisations, means considering the safety, health, welfare and wellbeing of people when they are at work, as well as the welfare of volunteers, members, participants and the general public. It is about considering and identifying risks, preventing avoidable accidents and protecting people from getting hurt.

Much of the Health and Safety law in the UK is concerned with protecting employees from workplace hazards and ensuring a safe work environment. However, organisations are also responsible for protecting their service users and visitors and for providing services and activities safely.

What are the legal requirements around health and safety?

UK health and safety law requires that all organisations:

• • Must assess health and safety risks to employees, customers, partners and any other people who could be affected by their activities.
  • Must arrange for the planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective measures to manage risks.
  • Should ensure they have access to competent health and safety advice.
  • Consult employees about their risks at work and current preventive and protective measures.
  • If you employ 5 or more people you must have a written health and safety policy that explains how you will manage health and safety in your organisation. You must share the policy, and any changes to it, with your employees. Even if you do not employ 5 people it is good practice to have a policy and share it with anyone involved in running your organisation.

Failure to comply with these requirements can have serious consequences – for both organisations and individuals. Sanctions include fines, imprisonment and disqualification.

Developing your policy

Your policy should show that you have considered the specific aspects of health and safety as they relate to your organisation’s work, assessed the risks, and put measures in place to address them. It should clearly say who does what, when and how. This means considering:

• • What safety issues might occur as a result of your work?
  • How will you protect staff, volunteers and others from injuries and accidents?
  • How will people know what to do if there is a fire or other emergency?
  • How will you make sure that the equipment and materials are safe?
  • How will you create and ensure a healthy and safe working environment for your team?
  • Who will be responsible for health and safety at your organisation, and how will you make sure they know what to do?

It is helpful to involve your team in the development of the policy to make sure you have considered all areas of your work. You may also want to seek specific advice from experts (e.g. in fire safety) to make sure you have the right systems in place.

You will need to provide training to a member of staff or trustee to be a fire marshal (which is mandatory) as well as training to be an emergency first aider (which is mandatory if you have over 5 members of staff).

Procedure information

In addition to creating a policy statement, it is important to consider and document the practical and procedural aspects of health and safety as they relate to your specific organisation.

The material you create is likely to be used as part of your induction process for new staff and volunteers and may also be needed in cases of incident, accident or emergency. Take care to include all relevant information, to be clear in the way it is presented, and to review both the policy and accompanying procedures regularly to make sure they are accurate.

Conducting a health and safety risk assessment

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the minimum you must do is:

• • Identify what could cause injury or illness in your business (hazards).
  • Decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how serious (the risk).
  • Take action to eliminate the hazard, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk.

You must have an organisational risk assessment, but you can also consider risk assessments for each kind of activity, particularly when you start a new project. The Health and Safety Executive publishes guidance on managing risk and risk assessment at work that can guide you through this process, and there is a template risk assessment included in the template policy for your use.

Part 2: Template

This template is designed for voluntary and community organisations to edit, customise and adopt as their own. Please take the time to read all sections and add, remove and change the document to include information specific to your own organisation, the people and issues you work with, and priorities you have identified.

Note:

• Red [text in square brackets] should be edited/customised before final sign off.
• Blue [text in square brackets] are notes to help you customise the document].
• Bold text is to draw attention to other policies that will help you to implement your EEDI policy and to be a good employer.

Resources

• Health and safety basics for your business - Resources from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
• Template health and safety policy and worked example from HSE.
• Health and safety law posters and leaflets. It is mandatory to display a health & safety poster in your workplace.
• Volunteering and health and safety from NCVO.
• Summary of charities general duties of care from NCVO.
• Event safety guidance from HSE.
• Specific settings and populations: additional health protection considerations - government guidance addressing early years and SEN provision, residential settings, travel and outdoor activities.
• Food safety - your responsibilities.
• Guidance on portable appliance testing (PAT) - these tests are not mandatory, but you do need to make sure electrical equipment is properly maintained.
• Working safety with display screen equipment from HSE.
• Government guidance on employers’ liability insurance - this is a legal requirement for any organisation employing staff.
• Health and safety for community groups – practical guidance from Resource Centre.