Health and Safety Executive action points

14 June 2024

This incident was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). As part of the investigation, it was discovered that the risk assessments (RA’s) related to the work being performed were not signed by the injured party. Additionally, the individual was not up-to-date with relevant health and safety training.

Following the investigation of the incident the HSE suggested the following actions points:

Action 1: Risk assessments (RA’s)
All RA’s must be up-to-date, easily accessible, read, understood and signed by all that work under them.
The Centre leads and group leads (authors of RA’s) are responsible for cascading this information. The authors of the RA’s are responsible for it being shared, read and signed by lab users.
Going forward the Health and Safety team will be conducting spot checks of risk assessments and asking for them.
Further information on RA’s can be found on the HSD link https://www.qmul.ac.uk/hsd/risk-assessment/

Action 2: Health and Safety training records
Each Centre/group needs to have a record of the Health and Safety training courses for their staff including whether they have completed training, and the dates the courses were completed.

Below is an example table that can use to record these details:

Name	Position	ID card number	Course	Course ID	Date course completed	Course renewal date	Associated Risk Assessment(s) details	Additional notes
Joe bloggs	Post doc	1234567	Working safely with biological hazards	HS020	09/05/2023	N/A	RA1234	training validity expires (4 years)

Further details on training courses can be found on the below HSD link
https://profdev.qmul.ac.uk/cpd-training/.

Best wishes,

The Lab Management team