Agenda item

This report highlights the Council’s Health & Safety Management arrangements, activities and performance for the financial year 2024/25.

Ian Church (Assistant Director, Corporate Property and Health & Safety) presented the report and elaborated the following:

• The strong performance of the housing team across the residential portfolio.
• Reported violence and aggression in library buildings continued to be an issue.
• The security of public meetings was being enhanced and reviewed.
• Health and safety preparation for the newly commissioned Civic Campus.

Charlotte Moar (Independent Member) asked about the target of mandatory training for staff and the achievement so far.

Ian Church noted that the target was always 100% as all staff joining the Council were mandated to take the online health and safety training course which included modules on fire safety, manual handling and workplace well-being. With the team’s insistence in sending out reminders very regularly, the Council was hitting 96% at the moment, with a normal structural gap between people joining and actually undertaking the course.  He said that in moving to the Civic Campus, all staff would be required to take the new mandatory health and safety refresher course before they could use their pass to access the new premises.  Ian added that the relocation to Civic Campus had become a catalyst where opportunities had been taken to review and refresh risk assessments for Council activities to improve the systems and drive further employee engagement.

In response to Charlotte Moar’s question about health and safety requirements for on-site contractors, Ian Church noted that before awarding the contracts, comprehensive pre-qualification checks would be conducted among shortlisted contractors to make sure only those already having compliant systems and competent people in place would be appointed.

Referring to the reported violence and aggression in library buildings, Councillor Lisa Homan was concerned about measures taken to enhance the security of the two smaller libraries, i,e. Askew Road Library and Avonmore Library.  She said they were both operated by Citizens Advice of which she was a trustee.  As she understood from the board meetings, staff did not feel safe in these libraries particularly the Avonmore Library which operated quite a lot of services.  She was disappointed to note that only six councils had responded to the request made via London Councils on library security and asked about security practices that could be put in place further to having CCTV across all sites. 

In response, Ian Church assured members that LBHF’s CCTV services was unique in terms of system response and staffing capabilities.  He agreed to understand more about the incidents from the staff in the two libraries and provide more information on the relationship with LBHF as well as security measures / practices that were currently in place, and what improvements could be made to help guard against violence and aggression.

ACTION: Ian Church

Councillor Adrian Pascu-Tulbure said he was worried about the violence and aggression incidents he heard about in schools and mentioned two incidents in particular involving teachers.

Ian Church said same as the situations at the libraries, more reporting and data collected would enable the health and safety team to work out helpful measures.  As he noted the reporting of near misses by schools was exceptionally low, he had raised more broadly with education colleagues about its reporting.  He said that near misses were a valuable source of information in the prevention of health and safety incidents in the workplace as they enabled the conduct of investigation to drive immediate improvements and lesson learnt where no personal injury or property damage had been sustained. Nevertheless, Ian agreed to find out more details about the particular incidents mentioned.

ACTION: Ian Church

RESOLVED

That the Committee noted the report