Agenda item

Report of the Director of Legal and Governance

Paul Millward, Head of Resilience, presented the Annual Report of Health and Safety within the Council, and was accompanied by Vicky Cook, Corporate Safety Adviser.

It is the Resilience Team’s responsibility to write the corporate procedures and policies for departmental managers to follow to ensure a safe environment for citizens and colleagues. Following a review by Internal Audit, it was noted that there was no mechanism to inform councillors of health and safety within the council, so this report will be submitted annually to the Audit Committee.

The following points were highlighted and members’ questions responded to:

(a)  The internal audit found that there were several areas in which improvements were required, including:

o  demonstrating that managers are trained in health and safety within their service;

o  asbestos management by managers;

o  completion of corporate safety advice issued within the audit recommendations;

o  formal completion of investigations into accidents/ near misses/ violence;

The report provides an update on progress to address these points with the support of SLMG ensuring that non-compliance is highlighted;

(b)  299 service level audits have taken place and when non-compliance is found it is challenged at every relevant level and reported to the responsible Corporate Director. It is expected that once the corporate safety audit recommendations are met, managers will update the register. However, it is understood that whilst some service areas are compliant, the register has not been updated,  and therefore, that presents a risk to the Council;

(c)  In the past three years there have been two interventions by the Health and Safety Executive, as outlined in the report along with the cost implications. Previously the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) could investigate an incident without charging but  there is now a fee if it is required to ‘intervene’ and investigate an incident;

(d)  Asbestos is carefully monitored and mandatory training in place for any member of staff and managers who may come into contact with it;

(e)  Where an incident or near miss occurs it is investigated with a view to ensuring that such instances can be prevented in future. The investigation needs to be proportionate to the incident;

(f)  The Corporate Health Social and Welfare Panel is a consultation meeting with the joint trade unions where information around health and safety policies and procedures is shared with the joint objective of preventing or mitigating health and safety incidents;

(g)  With regard to stress and well-being, there are packages to help managers manage stress both personally and within the team and HR policies and procedures are in place for stress management. In addition the Occupational Health and Well-being Team are able to offer advice. Reported incidents of stress are closely monitored by Human Resources with regard to corporate health. It is recognised that where staff are absence from work due to stress, in addition to the human cost, there is a cost to the Council and, therefore, prevention will provide savings and benefit the wellbeing of staff;

(h)  It is understood that in the past some staff did not report violent incidents (which relate to citizens attacking or abusing staff), but staff are strongly encouraged and supported to report these incidents. Possibly as a result, the number of recorded incidents has risen and continues to be monitored to identify any trends which can be addressed;

(i)  With regard to mandatory training, it is believed that there are instances whereby the training has been completed but not recorded as such in the departmental registers, but it is vital that all registers are maintained in real time to ensure effective monitoring and compliance management.

In light of the good health and safety relationship with the trades unions, members of the committee suggested that members of staff are encouraged to undertake training offered by the trades union as this is beneficial to all parties.

Members of the Committee welcomed the good work being undertaken by the Corporate Safety Team.

RESOLVED

(1)  to note the number of HSE interventions in the Council in the past three years;

(2)  for all Corporate Directors to undertake and ensure that the following actions are completed by Friday 25^th January 2019, with the outcome to be reported the Audit Committee at its meeting 22 February 2019:

(a)  to ensure their departmental colleagues can demonstrate up to date training in the mandatory health and safety courses, and, where appropriate, asbestos management;

(b)  that all outstanding Accident/Violence/Audit recommendations are completed and recorded on the corporate system;

(3)  for the Head of Resilience to provide information to enable a comparison of Nottingham City Council’s Health and Safety Performance against other Local Authorities in the next annual report;

(4)  for future annual health and safety reports to provide tracking information on reported violent incident trends, including what action, if any has been taken to address those trends.