![]() Our goal is to help schools of all shapes and sizes save time, stay compliant with regulatory requirements, and proactively reduce risk, so you can be confident you’re providing a safe environment for staff and pupils and protected against worst-case scenarios. WorkNest has provided specialist Health & Safety support to the education sector for over a decade and has extensive experience working with Multi-Academy Trusts. To make your life easier, WorkNest has developed a number of documents to help governors and trustees check what the school has in place and what is needed, including checklists detailing required risk assessments and training, both of which can be downloaded below. Remember, you don’t need to be a health and safety professional to ask challenging questions. You are not required to scrutinise every detail, but you will want to see that certain reports have been actioned, for example asbestos surveys and fire and legionella risk assessments. For this purpose, you might want to appoint a health and safety nominator governor who should have undertaken updated health and safety awareness training. I will typically visit the school three times per year solely to check in on health and safety, ask specific questions and see specific documentation.Īs a governor or trustee, you are looking for assurance that governance is being properly managed. Indeed, individuals can also be personally prosecuted under Section 36 and 37 the HSWA if there is deemed to be negligence on their behalf – making it even more important to get health and safety right.Īs a school governor myself, I split this document into meaningful and practical visits. Your school’s reputation and finances and.And if a Board is prosecuted, those on the Board could be individually named.Īs such, think of health and safety as ‘safeguarding’. Therefore, if someone is going to be prosecuted, it would likely be the Board as the employer, whether that’s governors or trustees. Ultimately, when it comes to identifying defendants in health and safety cases, the HSE will look at who’s in control of premises and what degree of control they have over what’s being done. This can be the Local Authority, the Governing Body or proprietor, or the Academy Trust. ![]() Should an incident occur, overall legal accountability for health and safety will rest with the employer – who the employer is will vary according to the type of school. Regardless of the structure of your school environment, health and safety should be owned right throughout the organisation and it’s important that it features on any meeting where governors or trustees are involved. Within Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), there is a Trust Board, and you may also have Full Governing Bodies (FGBs) in place at a local level who then delegate responsibilities to various subcommittees such as Finance and Premises, commonly known as the resources committee. However, the ultimate accountability and liability remains with the Board. So, who has accountability and responsibility for health and safety within schools? And who’s likely to be held liable should an incident occur?Īs a governor or trustee, you can delegate the day-to-day responsibility for managing health and safety to the Headteacher, School Business Manager or Site Manager. With all of this in mind, this article aims to explain, from one governor to another, what can go wrong, what your liabilities are, and how you can become more effective as a governor or trustee in respect to health and safety governance. This can mean that things may be missed, and there’s less opportunity to build relationships with individuals (though, arguably, this degree of separation can sometimes make it easier to ask more challenging questions that peers might not).Īll of these factors make managing health and safety more difficult – nonetheless, it’s an area you can’t afford to ignore. You’re also dealing with a number of competing demands and working with financial constraints.Īdditionally, as unpaid volunteers, we’re not there day in day out. ![]() Schools in particular require good governance, and health and safety is a vitally important aspect of this.Īs a school governor myself, I understand that for those who take on this role, time is limited. ![]() Managing health and safety within any organisation has never been more important than it is in 2022.
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