Health and Safety

Risk Assessment

 

What should a risk assessment cover?

The law states that a risk assessment must be 'suitable and sufficient', that it should show that:

  • a proper check was made
  • you asked who might be affected
  • you dealt with all the obvious significant risks, taking into account the number of people who could be involved
  • the precautions are reasonable, and the remaining risk is low
  • you involved your workers or their representatives in the process

The level of detail in a risk assessment should be proportionate to the risk and appropriate to the nature of the work. Insignificant risks can usually be ignored, as can risks arising from routine activities associated with life in general, unless the work activity compounds or significantly alters those risks.

Your risk assessment should only include what you could reasonably be expected to know - you are not expected to anticipate unforeseeable risks.

The Law

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 puts duties on employers to undertake a risk assessment and to consider appropriate control measures to control the risks identified. These risk assessments must be recorded if the company employs 5 or more individuals and should be reviewed at regular intervals or if something changes, e.g. an incident

5 Steps to Risk Assessment

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) model 5 steps to risk assessment is a useful tool to ensure you have suitably & sufficiently risk assessed a work activity or area. The steps are as follows:

  1. Identify hazards.
  2. Assess the risks - who might be harmed and how.
  3. Control the risks - decide on the precautions you need to take.
  4. Record your findings - implement them.
  5. Review the controls - revise as necessary.

This model is covered in the Risk Assessment Training (information below), and when utilising and completing each section of the University’ HS F001 Risk Assessment Template the 5 steps to risk assessment are suitably and sufficiently covered.

HSE 5 Steps to Risk Assessment

Specific Risk Assessments

Specific hazard risk assessments are required in certain circumstances such as manual handling, use of machinery, ionising radiation and radioactive substance, lasers, biological safety, chemical safety (not an exhaustive list).

Please see the relevant topic guidance page on the Health & Safety A to Z for further information on these specific risk assessments.

Risk Assessment Training

A risk assessment training course has been developed to help staff understand how to determine hazards and then to assess the associated risks. This training covers the University's approach to risk assessment and is for all staff who are required to carry out risk assessments at the University. This course is beneficial for all, regardless of what other health and safety training you may have otherwise received.

More information can be found on the Health & Safety Training webpages, upcoming courses will be available to book via LearnUpon.

Risk assessment e-learning is also available via LearnUpon for staff general staff awareness of risk assessment.

Approval

Risk assessments must not be written and approved by the same person.

Risk assessments should be approved by the person who manages the work or activity, for example, the line manager or Principal Investigator. Certain activities may require a higher level of approval because of the risk posed by the work, even with identified controls in place.

If the author of the risk assessment is also the person who manages the work or activity, they should seek a second person to review and approve the risk assessment.

A Health & Safety Coordinator should not be solely responsible for approving assessments but may be a joint approver for assurance purposes.

Recording

Risk assessments must be recorded, the HS F001 Risk Assessment Template  is a template to record non-specialist activity or work.

Schools & Divisions can decide how to store these locally, for example a Box file where it can be communicated and accessed by colleagues or in a regularly updated folder manual with a piece of equipment are both examples.

References and Documents

Health and Safety Executive (HSE)Managing risks and risk assessment at work

HS F001 General Risk assessment template [DOCX] 

HS F001 General Risk assessment template (excel)  - Excel version

HS G034 Risk Assessment Guidance

HS F001 Health and Safety Risk Assessment Matrix

Generic Risk Assessments (requires modification to accurately portray the risks associated)

Generic Office Risk Assessment