Senior Action Forum No 4 - Risk Assessment No 2 - Duty of Care and carrying out a Risk Assessment

A forum intending to hold an event might carryout a risk assessment when hiring a particular hall for the first time. The approach is to plan the following steps beforehand, namely:

• identify the hazards which might arise at the event;
• identify who could be harmed as a result of each hazard;
• identify the actions needed to prevent or mitigate injury or loss as a result of a hazard;
• establish who will carryout  such actions and when.

The procedures of actually doing a risk assessment might include:

1. review and relevant Forum documents on relevant matters, including: any insurance policy's terms and conditions (if the secretary's abstract of the policy is sufficiently detailed this should serve.);
2. the terms and conditions for the hiring of the hall (for example, the landlord may have supplied an evacuation plan and an abstract of the insurance policy for the hall);
3. a couple of weeks' before the event carryout an inspection of the hall - noting in a sytematic way, perhaps using a devised proforma - the hazards, possible harmees, actions etc (as  established above).
4. Note the two weeks will allow the landlord time to take any prerequisite action, eg a) checking out of date fire extinguishers, b) repairing broken tile (trip hazard), c) putting fire exit  signs in order etc, etc; 

Once the risk assessment is reviewed and the landlord's works done, the standard normal work plan for the forum's event (who does what) may need to be adjusted so that the roles and activities are tweaked to give effect to any concerns arising from the risk assessment, such as:

1. briefing the stewards of hazards and action which may be needed during the event;
2. setting up in accord with healthy and safe conditions - ensuring the well being of all;
3. event leaders announcements at the beginning of the meeting/event (briefing the audience;

Whilst each might be small, there may be many such requirements but the event team(s) usually cope with quirky items - most of it might be regarded as "commonsense".

Naturally, we all want to remain healthy, safe, and have a sense of well being whilst at a meeting.  This approach should result in such conditions - and will be seen to be done at the time. In the unfortunate circumstance of some kind of "official" investigation, say for insurance purposes following an accident, the records will be available, ie the likes of a) the risk assessment, b) correspondence with the landlord, c) the chairman's briefing notes to the stewards and the audience, etc. They go some way to show that the Forum took reasonable steps to avoid or mitigate hazards in exercising its duty of care.