Agenda item

Members received the report of the Head of Corporate Health, Safety and Emergency Resilience to provide an update on progress against the actions identified within the report.

In presenting the report, the Head of Corporate Health, Safety and Emergency Resilience signposted members to the 3 priorities identified. Work was ongoing to aid reduction of some to the bureaucracy around audit and risk assessments, it was advised risk assessment compliance had improved and projected that campaigns planned would help improve this further. The program of service audits commenced in mid-2022 and all had been deemed “satisfactory” at audit stage. Every service had been provided with a prioritised action plan to work through where appropriate.

Members challenged the figures on violent incident reporting in primary schools against a zero figure for secondary schools. It was explained that as the authority only managed this data from one secondary school, there were no figures to report. Members were also advised that the figure reported wasn’t an outlier and there had always been a degree of violence and aggression reported in schools. Members discussed how data broken down by whether these violent incidents were initiated by parents, pupils or staff would be useful.

During Member discussion, it was queried why a priority was to increase incident report rather than reducing incidents. It was explained that minor incidents are experienced by Council employees daily and go unreported, skewing the data and health and safety work. Members additionally highlighted figures where managers had stated there was no risk assessment available. This was explained as a potential misunderstanding of the form during completion and that in the majority of incidents some form of risk assessment was indeed available.

RESOLVED:-

1.    That the report be noted; and

2.    That the actions identified in the Executive Summary of the Health and Safety Report 2021-2022 be noted.