Southwark Education Department - whole building risk assessments

Project

To provide health and safety support to schools, administration departments and parents.
To provide health and safety training to school governors and head teachers so that they understood the legal obligations which their roles carry.
To carry out annual audits to ensure schools complied with current legislation. The audits included fire risk assessments and asbestos management plans.

A health and safety advisor was based at Southwark Education's offices and operated a helpdesk to provide a central point of contact for information. Any interested school, teacher, parent or other interested party could make use of this resource.
To provide a system of notification detailing any change in legislation to all establishments.
To compile tailored health and safety training packages for governors, head teachers and business unit managers.
To set up a centralised reporting system to ensure that all accidents and notifiable incidents were reported to the Health and Safety Executive. Accident statistics were collated and reported to the Director of Education.

Implementing changes in educational procedures to comply with current legislation.
Raising health and safety awareness across a large geographical area, and to a diverse audience which did not always understand the need for change.
Ensuring that the corporate strategic policy was implemented and was an integral part of the Education Department's operating procedure.

The Education Department began to accept and understand the need for change, embraced the new legislation, and implemented the required changes.
Training sessions were held to ensure that key managers understood the changes that had taken place and the need to disseminate the information to their staff.
As a result of the heightened awareness in health and safety there is now a Joint Safety Committee that liases with the Unions. Quarterly meetings are held and areas of concern are discussed.
The Education Department is now performing in accordance with corporate guidelines and is complying with the current health and safety legislation.