Our Health & Safety Committee meet Staff Side and Divisional Reps monthly to review health and safety activity and share learnings. Reducing slips, trips and falls work related injuries was a key theme in June, as well as a reminder about COSHH now being online rather than on paper. The attached is a brief summary to help colleagues understand their responsibilities. PLEASE SHARE ONWARD.

Slips, trips and falls are the main cause of injury at work in the Trust and the most frequent cause of more serious injuries, such as broken bones, that are reportable to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

You can help by:

• Removing hazards, for example by cleaning up spills yourself, or failing that, by making other people aware of the hazard so they don’t injure themselves. This could be as simple as putting a notice on the hazard to make others in the area aware. 
• If you are unable to make the area safe yourself or can’t remove the hazard (e.g. It might be too heavy or large to move alone) please report this to someone who can help to resolve the issue – i.e.  the Estates and Facilities Helpdesks (see the attached summary).

Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) risk assessments are now online.

There was previously a paper system in place so colleagues had access to information about any hazardous substances they use, what sort of protective equipment they might need to wear and what to do if they get the substance on them. 

The new system is online meaning it is much easier for everyone to access information (all Trust employees can log on and view what assessments are on the system using the link in the document). 

Our Trust has a legal obligation to provide staff with information about anything that may harm them at work and specifically about chemicals and biological hazards under the COSHH Regulations. By having the new system the Trust is making the information accessible to everyone and also allows them to look up information about substances they may not previously have worked with.

You can see a list of colleagues who are COSHH trained and can access risk assessments in the second attachment. You can also link here to a document explaining how to access and use the system.