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Festival Toolkit: Health & Safety: Risk Assessment & Management
Risk assessment and management are principally concerned with
health and safety issues related to the organisation of your festival/event, but also concerned
with strategic management issues.
A full explanation of how to conduct risk assessment/management is available from various sites
including
Business Link from which some of the following notes are
adapted.
Risk assessment and management should form a part of your overall Event Plan (see section on Event Management), and involve the following process or stages:
- Designate someone in the team to have specific responsibility for Health & Safety
- Identify and prioritise your potential risks
- Assess the likelihood of an event occurring (scale of 1 to 5)
- Understand how you will respond to the event
- Devise and implement systems for dealing with the event and its consequences
- Monitor the effectiveness of your control/response systems i.e. your risk assessment/management process
- Record your results
This encourages you to take a preventative approach and be proactive rather than just dealing
with consequences. It is in effect an essential aspect of your long term strategic management which
brings the following additional benefits:
- It improves your decision-making, planning and prioritisation
- Helps you to allocate capital and resources more efficiently
- Allows you to anticipate what may go wrong, minimising the amount of fire-fighting you have to do or, in a worst-case scenario, preventing a disaster or serious financial loss
- Significantly improves the probability that you will deliver your festival on time and to budget
The Health and Safety Exeuctive's
Event Safety Guide is a useful tool.
If you do not have a Health & Safety plan, the site has a leaflet which covers:
- Health & Safety Policy statement
- Responsibilities
- Health and Safety Risks
- Consultation with employees
- Safe plant & equipment
- Safe handling & use of substances
- Information, instruction and supervision
- Competency for tasks & training
- Accidents, first aid etc.
- Monitoring
- Emergency Procedures
- Some key areas of risks
- Getting more information
Websites
The Business Link website has a section on
Managing Health & Safety
Further reading:
- NCVO: What is risk management?
- VAN briefing note 67, Risk assessment for event organisers (Word format)
- Zurich Municipal publication: The local authority guide for the Management of Safety at Events, includes the following guidance sheets about Health & Safety issues:
-
- Event Guidance Notes (Word format) (contains comprehensive information with regard to pre-planning, organising the event, final preparations and post-event).
- Sample Accident Report Form
- Event Risk Assessment Guidance Note and Form (PDF format)
-
Safety Inspection Checklist
Case study
National Council for Voluntary Organisations:
Implementing Risk Management
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