Health and Safety (H&S) management in schools is an essential part of providing a safe work environment for staff, children and visitors, as well as being a legal requirement under statutory legislation. Implementing and maintaining an effective management system should be integral with all other aspects of managing a school, it is not an additional task.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidance for management systems follows the Plan, Do, Check, Act model and as part of this, external audits support the local monitoring of health and safety and allows the Health and Safety Team to provide support where gaps are present in compliance with legal requirements. The local authority also has a legal requirement to monitor health and safety in maintained schools and an annual Health and Safety audit is a Haringey requirement for all maintained schools
The Haringey Schools Health and Safety Advisor arranges an annual audit with schools for this purpose, providing the school with advice on achieving compliance, answering questions that arise during the audit and supplying an action plan for the school to work with to address any gaps in compliance.
As with any effective management system, necessary documentation must be available to all relevant persons, headteachers, school business managers and site managers must all have access to health and safety compliance documentation. This can be easily achieved by having a central repository accessible to the relevant persons. This will become particularly useful if an inspector from the HSE or other enforcing agency should attend the school and request risk assessments, training records, maintenance records or any other compliance documents. Schools must ensure that H&S information is accessible and does not depend on a single employee for its access.
The local authority expects that schools will have all compliance records available, should they have a visit from an enforcing agent which may not be prearranged, or an auditor by previous arrangement. With the coming September term, The Schools Health and Safety Advisor will be arranging an annual audit with schools. The Health and Safety Team would respectfully ask that schools make every effort to keep to the arranged dates.
The Health and Safety Team would like to wish all school staff a restful and much deserved summer break. We look forward to working with you in the coming term
Andrew Turton, Schools Health and Safety Advisor
Email – Andrew.turton@haringey.gov.uk
Phone – 020 8489 3215
Mobile – 07811 976258