Health and safety guide

Audits and inspections are an important part of health and safety management.

Audits focus on the systems in place within a service or department and should be carried out annually by service managers with their safety co-ordinators. 

Workplace inspections should be carried out by building or team managers with trade unions every 6 months and focus on identifying workplace hazards and ensuring that the management systems are being implemented at the front line.

Ideally a team comprising the manager of a department, the relevant supervisor and the union appointed safety representative for the area concerned should carry out the inspection. Where several services share a building or work area, one manager may be nominated to carry out the inspection for the whole area to avoid repetition.

Managers should conduct inspections of all work areas, buildings and premises under their control or in which they have employees working. Inspections should also include any buildings / premises that may not be a direct place of work but may be visited by the public eg band stands, park pavilions etc. 

Safety inspections should be undertaken at least twice a year, however union appointed safety representatives are entitled to inspect the workplace every three months as long as they have given the employer or his representatives reasonable notice in writing of their intention to do so. High risk areas may justify the undertaking of more frequent inspections and the manager may wish to set in place their own inspection regime.

Formal safety inspections should be carried out in addition to any daily or weekly checks that need to be undertaken for the safe operation of the building / service eg daily checks in leisure centres.

A safety inspection procedure and checklist (MS Word, 236KB) is available for managers carrying out inspections.

Using the checklist ensures relevant items are considered during the inspection and provides a formal record of the inspection. If there are any areas that are specific to a department that are not included on the checklist, the manager must ensure that they included.

Following the inspection, a plan of action should be devised by the manager in order to rectify any hazards or risks that have been identified. The completed checklists should be filed in the workplace and be readily accessible for inspection if necessary. 

The corporate health and safety programme is carried out by the Corporate Health and Safety team to enable measurement of the progress of the health and safety management systems within the directorates and their associated services.

Directorates have been separated into 18 service areas which will be audited by the Corporate Health and Safety team once within a cycle of 5 years.

Services will also have to complete an annual self-audit questionnaire each year which has to be sent to the Corporate Health and Safety team and will be followed up with a time limited action plan. 

The process of self auditing focuses on management systems in the service and is reliant on teams completing their routine safety inspection checklist, or similar, every six months.

For more information contact Amanda Sherratt.