Health and Safety: a Practical Way to Love Others

This is the first in a series of articles aimed at equipping churches in the area of Health and Safety compliance. They will be released over the coming months: sign up to receive our regular emails to be notified when they are published.

When occupied with the business of running a church, it is tempting to view health and safety as one of those areas that does not need much of our attention as leaders.

After all, church activities are usually considered low-risk environments, and it can feel frustrating to deal with what might seem like the ‘red tape’ of health and safety when we have matters of ministry to focus on.

However, we ignore health and safety law at our peril for several reasons:

• We are called to love one another and our neighbours. Health and safety law helps us to properly exercise love with all those we interact with.
• Poorly managed safety usually creates its own problems, which can easily become more costly, time-consuming, or disruptive than a sensible and proportionate management approach. As has been said by many “if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident”.
• It is the law, which means ignoring it risks trouble with the authorities and flouts the requirements of Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:11-17, in which a moral obligation to honour earthly authorities is clearly set out.

Health and safety is primarily about protecting people from physical harm.

Therefore, health and safety law requires organisations to ensure employees, volunteers, contractors, and anyone else who may be affected by their activities are safe from harm that might arise from those activities or the associated equipment or environment.

The main relevant legislation in the UK is the Health and Safety at Work Etc. Act 1974, with most other regulations covering specific aspects of safety sitting under this act.

To keep people safe and ensure legal compliance, clear plans should be in place which are both communicated with all those who might be affected and monitored to ensure these are followed.

Here are the key areas you should be considering as you implement or review your Health and Safety arrangements:

Have a plan (aka your Health and Safety Policy)

A Health and Safety Policy sets out your general approach to health and safety, explaining how it is managed in your organisation.

It should clearly say who does what, when, and how. If you have five or more employees, this must be written down, although you can of course do this with fewer employees to demonstrate good practice, especially if most workers are volunteers - as is the case in most churches.

We have produced a template Health and Safety Policy. You must ensure that anything in your policy is implemented. It is one of the first documents to be looked at in the event of a serious incident, along with the Risk Assessment for that activity.

Manage the risks (aka your Risk Assessment)

Assessing and controlling risk is the cornerstone of health and safety.

Although often overcomplicated, it is a fundamentally simple process consisting of:

• Identifying what could cause injury or illness
• Deciding how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how seriously
• Taking appropriate actions to reduce the impact.

If you have more than five employees, risk assessments must be written down, but again it is good practice to do so regardless.

Provide information and training

You must give your “workers” (both employees and volunteers) clear instructions and information, including appropriate training and supervision.

You should make sure everyone has the right level of information on how to carry out tasks safely, on any hazards or risks in their work areas (and what you are doing or require them to do to control these), and what the emergency procedures are.

You should record what safety information has been disseminated, and to whom, whether through formal training or via updates/announcements. Sharing your Health and Safety Policy and Risk Assessments is a good starting point.

If you employ anyone, you must either display the official health and safety law poster (which you can find on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website) where your workers can easily read it or provide them each with the equivalent leaflet. The poster explains health and safety laws and lists what workers and their employers should do. You should add details of any health and safety contacts.

You should also consult with those doing the work to see if they have any concerns or suggestions on how to better manage health and safety.

Report accidents and illnesses

You must report certain serious incidents, accidents, and work-related illnesses to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). See the HSE website for details on what needs to be reported. Depending on the size of your organisation, you may also be required to keep a record of all accidents in an accident book or similar.

These records can also be helpful when dealing with your insurance company or as a source of lessons learned to help prevent other incidents from occurring. Make sure you handle any personal details in accordance with the relevant data protection requirements.

Appoint a competent person

You must appoint a “competent person” to help you meet your health and safety duties. They should have the skills, knowledge and experience to be able to recognise hazards and help you put sensible controls in place to protect workers and others from harm.

If possible, this should be someone within the organisation, though an external advisor is acceptable, as is a combination of both.

While having someone within the church to help manage the routine tasks of health and safety is important, having someone with the technical knowledge is invaluable. This can be done by training people within the church (see below for more information on this) or by engaging with consultants on a retainer or ad hoc basis.

Essential welfare

Employers must provide welfare facilities and a working environment that is healthy and safe for everyone in the workplace, including those with disabilities.

This means providing a workplace that is clean and safe, with well-maintained equipment, no obstructions to traffic routes, reasonable working temperature, ventilation, lighting and seating, and including sufficient access to drinking water, toilets, washbasins, and space to rest and eat.

Failure to ensure safety to the required standard is a criminal act, which can lead to prosecution based on what could have happened - regardless of whether anyone was actually harmed.

Besides criminal liability, injuries arising from a failure to meet a duty of care can also lead to civil claims by the injured party.

Having robust safety systems in place which are clearly communicated and monitored is the only way to prevent prosecutions and help reduce the likelihood of civil claims.

• Take this opportunity to review or implement your Health and Safety Policy and Risk Assessments. A template policy is available in the Church Policies and Templates section of our website.
• We are working on a Risk Assessment template we hope will be available later this year. Sign up to our emails to be notified when it is ready.
• The Health and Safety Executive have a helpful guide on their website which is worth looking at.
• For more tailored support, you can contact Pierre Carion, a Health and Safety Consultant specialising in supporting churches. He co-authored this article and can be contacted by email at [email protected].
• You can also contact the Association of Church Accountants and Treasurers (ACAT) who provide training in health and safety, risk management, and legal duties of trustees in addition to their core work supporting treasurers and others involved in church finance.
• You could also speak to your insurance provider as they often have resources available to help in this area.

Please sign up to our regular emails to be notified of future articles and resources. This article is the first in a series looking at a range of safety and compliance topics, including Risk Assessment, Property Safety, Food Safety and First Aid.

Please let us know if there are any other topics you would like us to cover in the future using the form below.

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