Duties of Your Employer

Health and safety laws clearly place most health and safety duties with the employer.

The employer is deemed to be the:

local authority (LA) in community schools, community special schools, voluntary-controlled schools, maintained nursery schools and pupil referral units
governing body in foundation schools, foundation special schools, voluntary-aided schools and academies
governing body or proprietor in independent schools
college governing body or trustee in incorporated colleges of further education.

The main duties of the employer

These main duties of the employer are to:

provide all necessary information, instruction, training and supervision to enable individuals to be safe
provide and maintain a safe place of work with safe entry and exit
provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risk to health
provide and maintain systems of work that are safe
arrange for the safe use, handling, storage and transport of articles and substances.

Clearly, it is impossible to remove all risks and hazards from any working environment. The law recognises this and qualifies all the duties listed above with the term 'so far as is reasonably practicable'. This means that the level of risk involved can be balanced against the time, trouble, cost and difficulty of taking measures to remove the risk.

With some specific legislation, however, the duties are absolute, ie the cost of a preventative measure has no bearing upon whether it should be implemented.

Health, safety and welfare policy

The employer is obliged to produce a written safety policy that states the organisation's commitment to the health, safety and welfare of its employees and others. The employer must state how health and safety is to be organised and by whom, and detail the arrangements for how health and safety is implemented (usually through site-specific rules and procedures).

Where the LA is the employer, it often produces model policies that outline the organisation's overall commitment, while leaving scope for site-specific arrangements to be produced by individual establishments.

Duties to consult on health and safety matters

Recognised trade unions such as AMiE and/or ATL have the right to:

appoint safety representatives
require employers to establish safety committees.

Employers are also required to consult with all employees on health and safety matters, including those who are not members of a trade union. This is especially important as the employee is often best placed to advise on control measures that are needed.

The employer must consult and work in cooperation with trade union groups and employees when developing health and safety arrangements. Consultation must take place on:

changes which may substantially affect employees' health and safety at work (eg changes in procedures, equipment or new technologies)
employer's arrangements for appointing competent people to assist in complying with the law
information that employees are given on the likely risks and dangers from their work, and the control measures needed
planning of health and safety training.

For more see The Role of the AMiE Safety Rep