Health and safety

Collective responsibility for ensuring the health and safety of employees, students and other persons resorting to the School lies with the Council, which is the governing body for the school. This responsibility is discharged through the Director of the School, who on behalf of the Council is responsible for ensuring there are adequate organisation and arrangements in place for the implementing of the School’s safety policy.

Health and safety responsibilities in academic departments, institutes and centres

Heads of Departments, Heads of Interdisciplinary Institutes, Heads of Research Centres, have overall responsibility for their departments and therefore are responsible for assuring themselves that there are arrangements in place to comply with the School’s health and safety policy.

The Departmental Manager will be responsible for the day-to-day management of health and safety matters relating to the activities of the department and as such will be accountable to the Head of Department for ensuring that there are arrangements in place for implementing the School’s Health and Safety Policy and related procedures in their department.

The Department Manager will make arrangements for a local Safety Policy statement to be prepared for their Department, which indicates responsibilities within it for health and safety and any specific risks arising from the Department’s activities and the measures in place to control and manage those risks. (A template statement is available for Departments to use).

The Department Manager will undertake the role of Safety Co-ordinator or delegate an appropriate member of staff to undertake this role. (see below)

Functions of a Safety Co-ordinator

In most instances the Head of Department will delegate the implementation of the Department’s health and safety arrangements on a day-to-day basis to the Safety Co-ordinator

Listed below are some of the functions of the Safety Co-ordinator. These in turn can be delegated to other members of a department. However, whenever functions are delegated or tasks assigned, steps must be taken to ensure that the individual understands what they must do to discharge their role, that they are competent to undertake any task allocated to them and that there are arrangements to monitoring outcomes.

The Local Safety policy statement should identify who, what, when, and how safety functions are delegated.

The Safety co-ordinator will

• Assist with the production and implementation of the Departmental safety policy.
• Where necessary to seek advice and assistance from the School’s Health and Safety Adviser.
• Inspect the department (or arrange for inspections to be undertaken) and report defects to the Estates department
• Ensure that all accidents, incidents and work related ill health are recorded and notified to the School’s Health and Safety Adviser. The Safety Co-ordinator will either investigate themselves or arrange for the School’s Health and Safety Adviser to investigate such incidents in order to determine what measures need to be taken to prevent a re-occurrence.
• Be the Department’s point of contact for health and safety issues and for receiving and disseminating information received from the School’s Health and Safety Adviser or other relevant person.
• Where appropriate provide the Head of Department with feedback on matters concerning H&S e.g. progress made, any issues that cannot be resolved locally etc.
• Arranging for persons new to the Department to be briefed on the Department’s health and safety arrangements including the action to take in the event of fire.
• Review VDU workstations (computer\monitors) and proposed location of VDU workstations
• Ensure that the department has arrangements in place for the safe storage of materials and equipment.
• Arrange with the Estates Department for the Department’s portable electrical appliances to be inspected and tested on a regular basis.
• Review the department’s health and safety arrangements on an annual basis.
• Where appropriate arrange for any health and safety issue or matters of concern raised by employees to be discussed at Departmental or team meetings.
• Ensure that employees receive information on the work of the School’s Safety committee. Either by circulating the minutes of the H&S committee or advising them where they can be accessed.
• Deal with issues raised by safety representatives.
• Liasing with the School’s Health and Safety Adviser to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of Fire Wardens for the department, and taking the necessary action to ensure that persons are nominated and trained.
• Liasing with the School’s Health and Safety Adviser and or the Head of Security to ensure that the Department has adequate arrangements for action to take in the event of fire or other emergencies.
• Check that fire extinguishers are in place and report any fire violations to Estates Department or Security as appropriate.

Health and safety advice

Advice on any health and safety issue can be obtained from Ann O’Brien who is the School’s Health and Safety Adviser. She is based in the Planning & Corporate Policy Division and is contacted as follows:

Further information can be found in the Arrangements for implementing the School's health and safety policy section of the School’s Safety Policy which is available on the web.

1. Departmental or Divisional Safety policies.
2. Risk assessment
3. Vulnerable groups - Pregnant workers & nursing mothers
4. Work Experience & Young Workers
5. Fire
6. Accident reporting
7. First Aid
8. Health and Safety Training
9. Consulting on health and safety issues
10. Use of computers
11. Hazard reporting
12. Work equipment
13. Storage & good house-keeping.
14. Electrical Safety
15. Use of chemicals and other substances hazardous to health
16. Manual handling
17. Stress
18. Occupational health
19. Working hours
20. Lone working
21. Safety Inspections
22. Communicating health and safety information
23. Contractors
24. Managing Asbestos
25. Smoking
26. Permit to Work Systems

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