Health and Safety Statement of Policy and Staff Guidebook

Author:	Mike Cooper, last updated by Mhairi Dunn
Date of Publication:	August 2015
Revised	August 2024
Next date of review	August 2025

POLICY STATEMENT

The York Learning health and safety policy and procedures are underpinned and informed by the City of York Council’s health and safety policy and procedures and the online resource B-Safe which is a joint resource between CYC and NYCC.

The York Learning Health and Safety policy and staff guidebook should be read in conjunction with the City of York Council overall Health and Safety Policy which can be found on the intranet.

The service has a dual responsibility to both employees and to learners who attend programmes. The health and safety responsibility extends to all activities that are related to the programme of study, including visits that support provision.

Our aim in implementing this policy is to ensure that we create a culture which recognises that controlling health and safety risks is an essential part of everyone’s day to day responsibility. Our aim is to ensure that:

1. Learners are confident that they are coming to classes where their health and safety is well managed.
2. Tutors and other staff are confident and can rely on well planned health and safety systems when carrying out their responsibilities.
3. Resources are targeted to where they will be most effective in response to the requirements of risk assessments.
4. Staff work in a safe environment and absences due to injuries or occupational ill health, and costs incurred by property damage, are reduced.

As part of our duty of care to staff and learners, there is a separate policy which covers dealing with inappropriate behaviour in online classes which could put learners at risk of radicalisation or similar. Please see the ‘York Learning Hate Speech Online Guidance’ document.

 

TUTORS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

It is the tutor’s responsibility to:

• Ensure they know what their role is in the event of a fire and that learners understand the fire evacuation procedures
• Ensure that they understand the procedures related to First Aid
• Check that the classroom, work areas and equipment are safe before use,
• Ensure protective equipment, when needed, is adequate and is used,
• Ensure learners are aware of their health and safety responsibilities (see below),
• Bring problems to the attention of administrative and management staff who can deal with them,
• Report incidents and accidents (see below) in the appropriate manner,
• Ensure health and safety checklists and learner health questionnaires are completed when required to do so as part of the delivery (annexes 2 & 3),
• Inform the service of any risk assessment requirements, using the ‘Notification of Additional Risk’ proforma in this handbook (annex 4),
• Tutor responsibilities are distributed by the Operations management team to all staff annually to ensure staff are up to date and current.

 

LEARNERS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

A key responsibility of tutors is to ensure learners are aware of their health and safety responsibilities. Essentially, these consist of two strands:

• To take responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others by following health and safety instructions given by staff,
• reporting any incidents or safety concerns to a member of staff.

These responsibilities are contained in the Learner Handbook that is given to learners and should be highlighted for learners at the start of the course.

Learners who are doing a remote course via video conferencing software such as Zoom will have seen health and safety information as part of their online induction process when they sign up for the course via our online booking portal. This includes how to keep themselves safe online, how to report a safeguarding concern and information about how to sit correctly at a computer.

As of August 2023 our provision has returned to pre-COVID delivery models where both face to face and remote/blended delivery is used. Provision is baked in to planning/delivery for each area should COVID return in a substantive way which leads to national lockdowns again.

 

SUBCONTRACTED DELIVERY

As part of our learning offer, York Learning subcontracts individual learning programmes to pre-agreed partner organisations. As part of the Quality Assurance Process, all partner organisations have their Health and Safety polices checked and recorded under the due diligence for subcontracting procedure and the York Learning Health and Safety handbook is shared with the partner organisation. Partner organisations are visited on at least an annual basis to ensure all learners are working in a safe and suitable environment and that all polices and actions agreed with the partner organisation as part of the subcontract arrangement are being followed. Partner organisations are informed of the reporting procedure in the event of an incident or ‘near miss’ (see below)

York Learning also acts as delivery subcontractor for the learning programmes of other organisations. As part of the subcontract process, York Learning agree to familiarise themselves with the Health and Safety policy of the parent organisation and undertakes to keep learners safe by using the policies and procedures from the York Learning Health and Safety handbook in its most current and up to date form.

 

INCIDENT REPORTING

Another key responsibility of all members of staff is to report any incidents that have health and safety implications. An ‘incident‘ includes the following, where they arise out of, or in connection with work:

• Accident – an event that results in injury or ill-health (including as a result of physical violence).
• Near miss – an event that, while not causing harm, has the potential to cause injury or ill-health, or, a set of circumstances that have the potential to cause injury or ill-health.

The intention of the policy is to prevent accidents, not just to record accidents that have taken place. Each York Learning centre has access to B-Safe, the reporting tool for reporting accidents. If you need to report an accident or a near miss, you should contact the administrative staff at the centre and they will support you in completing the report on B-Safe.

If you are working in a building which is not one of our adult education centres, accidents or near misses need to be reported to the Operations Management team for York Learning who will then report it via B-Safe. This guidance should be used in conjunction with Incident Reporting and Investigation compliance note CN2.

 

RISK ASSESSMENT

The service has identified seven categories of risk associated with activities in our provision, namely:

1. Building assessments (if required),
2. Low risk activities,
3. Medium risk activities involving the use of some equipment or specialist facilities,
4. Medium risk activities that involve exercise programmes, where individual health considerations would be a risk,
5. High risk activities,
6. Childcare risk assessments – where York Learning staff are running a crèche for pre-school children as part of provision. Crèche provision is usually but not exclusively used with Family Learning classes,
7. Assessments covering apprenticeships/traineeships where a apprentice/trainee is working at a workplace where there is an inherent risk involved. As part of our duty of care to those apprentices/trainees an annual workplace inspection is carried out by York Learning.

For categories 2-4, we have devised generic risk assessments and published them in this handbook. Please refer to Annex 1. The master copies are stored online on B-Safe and are updated annually as part of the review of this handbook. You should:

• Identify which category of risk your course falls into,
• Ensure that you apply the control measures identified,
• Using the ‘Notification of Additional Risk’ pro-forma (annex 4), notify us of any additional control measures that you think need to be added to a generic risk assessment to cover circumstances that have not been taken into account.

The 5th category, ‘high risk activities’ require individual risk assessments. You should:

1. Check whether or not the activities you undertake are high risk according to the descriptions given below
2. It they are high risk, check whether or not there is an existing individual risk assessment for that activity. Please access the online Safety Management system or contact the Health & Safety Assessor. If there is no current risk assessment that covers your activity, you will need to request that one is created.

 

RISK ASSESSMENT CATEGORIES IN DETAIL

Category One – Building Assessments

These would only be used in the event of a York Learning course being delivered in premises which have not been used by York Learning/CYC before or York Learning moving their base of operations to new premises.  The building would be risk assessed using the standard premises workplace inspection form ref no:CYC/HS/F10A and any issues dealt with before learners and/or staff were allowed into the premises.

Category Two  – Low risk activities

Category 2 consists of classroom-based programmes and activities where there is little or no equipment used by tutors or students. There may be some audio or visual aid equipment or the use of overhead projectors or data projectors. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Family Learning and Functional Skills,
• Apprenticeship Training carried out at CYC premises,
• Languages,
• Creative writing,
• GCSE classes.

Category Three – Medium risk activities involving the use of some equipment or specialist facilities.

Category 3 consists of programmes and activities that involve the use of some equipment or specialist facilities. These include, but are not limited to:

• All computer classes,
• Dress making,
• Craft classes where equipment is used,
• Art Classes,
• Cookery,
• Music classes,
• Routes to Success training classes. Please note that due to the nature of the learners on the Routes2Success programme, some learners may require individual risk assessments to help staff manage their behaviour/keep them safe/look after their medical needs,
• Work Based Learning,
• English and Maths classes using blended/flexible learning where PC terminals are used in the delivery of sessions.

Category Four – Medium risk activities that involve exercise programmes, where individual health considerations would be a risk

Category 4 consists of programmes and activities such as sport and fitness and dance classes, where people who have particular medical conditions or poor levels of fitness would potentially be at risk. Category 4 also includes alternative therapy and science programmes where certain types of manipulation or the use of chemicals could be a risk. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Dance classes
• Sport and fitness
• Pilates
• Yoga

In these classes in the first class after a learner has enrolled the learners are asked to fill in a Health Questionnaire (see Annex 3) which gives the tutor information about the individual learner. This is on top of the online enrolment system which asks learners to state medical information the service needs to be aware of. Because disclosure is voluntary having two opportunities for learners to disclose a health condition that might be affected by a class where physical activity is included reduces the risk that a learner’s pre-existing medical condition is affected. York Learning recognise that this risk is only reduced by having two opportunities to declare pre-existing medical conditions and cannot be removed altogether.

Category Five – High risk activities

Category 5 consists of programmes and activities where the nature of the activity is inherently dangerous, for example intensive aerobic activity, or where the equipment being used carries a risk of serious injury, for example metalwork and woodwork.

Category 5 also consists of programmes from category 4 which involve a lone tutor teaching or where first aid or access to a telephone was restricted. The service should have very few of these programmes.

Category 5 programmes require an individual risk assessment. If you teach a course that the tutor/curriculum manager think falls into category 5 and there is not already an individual risk assessment they complete and return the ‘Notification of Additional Risk’ pro-forma. The York Learning operations management team will then create in discussion with the tutor/curriculum manager a bespoke risk assessment for that specific class/scenario.

Note that SafeOrg has been retired and that all risk assessments are now stored on B-Safe. As B-Safe is a beta full access for all YL staff has not yet been rolled out and the facility for staff to check whether a risk assessment already exists is currently not available – the tutor/CM should contact the York Learning operations management team to determine availability or whether a bespoke risk assessment is required. (see above)

Guidance for tutors re: enrichment activities away from the main learning classroom/venue:

Please note that on any course offered by York Learning where learners are taken out from the standard course venue to engage in an enrichment activity (eg a trip to a nature reserve with a Family Learning group) MUST have an individual risk assessment. Contact the York Learning operations management team at least two weeks before the enrichment activity takes place to discuss your enrichment activity and to allow for a bespoke risk assessment to be created.

Category Six – childcare crèche risk assessments

The York Learning Sessional Childcare Service has its own specific Health and Safety Policy due to the changing nature of the needs of the service users. This policy is used in conjunction with the Health and Safety Handbook to ensure that all children using the crèche facility and staff running the crèche facility are kept safe.

As part of the Sessional Childcare Service Health and Safety Policy, all crèche venues are inspected annually. If issues are raised as part of that inspection, a second unannounced follow up inspection will be carried out by the Operations Manager or Operations Supervisor after due time has been given to resolve the issues.

A copy of the Sessional Childcare Service Health and Safety Policy is listed in Annex 5.

Category Seven – workplace assessments for apprentices/loan funded qualifications and placements.

As part of York Learning’s duty of care for apprentices and those taking loan funded qualifications with York Learning, a workplace inspection takes place annually (apprentices) and every two years (loans).

These inspections are done through OneFile with the workplace answering questions posed to the manager of the setting.

In the event of an inspection flagging up that an apprentice/loan learner was working in conditions deemed by the inspection to be unsafe, an urgent review would take place involving the manager/owner of the workplace, Workplace Learning Manager and potentially the Strategic Manager/Head of Service. The safety of the apprentice would remain York Learning’s highest priority.

We undertake face to face assessments for Routes2Success learners going on work placement. This is done because the placement setting is almost certainly not set up on OneFile and whereas with apprentices/loan learners in WBL the onus is on the employer to be vigilant and demonstrate all health and safety is being followed, with placements for the Routes programme they are young people in our care and therefore a face to face assessment is appropriate. The assessment is done before the young person starts the placement (usually 2 weeks before), is carried out by the Operations Manager (Risk) and records are stored on our YorkLearningEducation Google portal as a Google form is used. In the event that an inspection found health and safety concerns about the workplace, the tasks the young person would be expected to perform or indeed any matter which was not considered up to standard, the placement would be cancelled.