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Departmental safety arrangements
This page provides guidance for departments to prepare and maintain their safety arrangements for managing health and safety within the department.
On this page
- Who is responsible for the departmental safety arrangements?
- What should the safety arrangements include?
- Who should have access to the safety arrangements?
- Review and authorisation of the safety arrangements
At UCL, a department's health and safety management system is recorded as the departmental safety arrangements.
This is the written policies, processes and procedures which detail how the department complies with UCL's overall health and safety policy, how it manages risk in the department and how health and safety objectives are actioned.
Having safety arrangements in place is a legal requirement and a requirement of the Target 100 (T100) programme.
Who is responsible for the departmental safety arrangements?
The Head of Department (HoD) is ultimately responsible for departmental safety arrangements to be in place, but the task of preparing the arrangements can be delegated to competent person(s) within the department.
The competent person(s) should have knowledge and understanding of:
- The departmental structure
- The work activities, studies and research that are undertaken
- The hazards and risks within the department
- UCL's overarching policies and arrangements for health and safety
Departments can have a broad risk profile and have multiple locations, in these instances it is advisable to have relevant people from different areas of the department work on producing the safety arrangements to ensure they are suitable and fit for purpose.
An effective way of having the relevant people prepare and review the arrangements would be to assign this task to the departmental safety committee.
What should the safety arrangements include?
Safety arrangements will vary in size and complexity due to the different risk profiles across UCL.
Guidance on some of the key sections that could be included in the safety arrangements are listed below:
Policy
The arrangements should have a commitment to implement UCL's health and safety policy. This could be through a short statement of commitment which is signed by the Head of Department.
Alternatively, the department may wish to have their own health and safety policy, wherein the commitment to implement UCL's health and safety policy is included.
Responsibilities
This section would detail the safety responsibilities of all individuals within the department based on the job role, ranging from the Head of Department down to employees and students.
It would also note the responsibilities of safety role holders within the department.
Planning and objectives
The arrangements should cover how the department will meet UCL's health and safety objectives and whether the department will develop their own safety objectives for improvement.
This section can detail how the department will make safety improvement plans for departmental risks or as identified during the T100 process.
Risk management
The risk management section should detail how the department undertakes risk assessments, who is involved in the process, who can approve them and any training that is required.
Emergency arrangements
This section will detail the processes in place for the department to deal with emergency situations, such as fire evacuation and first aid coverage.
Communication
The arrangements should cover how the department will communicate health and safety information to staff, such as through a safety committee, newsletters, staff emails etc.
Training
This section would cover how the department would meet induction requirements for staff and what further safety training is needed for certain tasks / job roles.
Refresher training requirements should also be covered within the arrangements.
Monitoring
The arrangements should cover how safety performance is monitored within the department, both through proactive and reactive methods.
This section should also detail how safety performance is reported to management within the department.
Documentation
This section will detail how safety information is documented and recorded within the department, where it is retained and how to access it.
Review
The arrangements should be reviewed regularly, so this section will detail how frequently it should be reviewed and who conducts the review.
Who should have access to the safety arrangements?
The safety arrangements should be freely accessible to all staff and students of the department. They should be made aware of the arrangements and where to find them as part of their safety induction.
In most cases, the arrangements are written as a Word document and published onto the departmental intranet in a pdf format which all staff and students should have access to.
Review and authorisation of the safety arrangements
The safety arrangements should be reviewed on an ad-hoc basis as there are often changes to departmental or central UCL policies, procedures or personnel. As a minimum the arrangements should be reviewed annually.
The Head of Department is responsible for ensuring the review of the arrangements is carried out and authorising them.
Last updated: Thursday, October 14, 2021
We encourage all staff and students to report accidents, hazards and near misses when they happen.