Consultation on health and safety decisions
We are legally required under the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations and Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations to consult relevant employees before implementing changes involving equipment, processes, or work organisation that may substantially affect their health and safety, or regarding risk assessments and protective measures that cover their work activities.
The purpose of consultation is to ensure:
- compliance with legal requirements to consult employees and/or their representatives on matters that affect their health and safety
- employees are informed of proposed changes in advance, and are given the opportunity to provide their input on them as they develop, thereby helping to ensure suitable, practical standards are produced.
Types of consultation
- Local consultation: most consultation takes place through including health and safety on the agenda of team meetings. Team meetings can also be used to discuss any concerns they have about health and safety issues affecting them or the team. If you do not have team meetings, check with your manager how consultation and communication on health and safety takes place.
- University-wide consultation: takes place through the Health and Safety Group or directly with safety representatives from Unison, Unite and UCU. The safety representatives represent all employees on health and safety, not just their members. Where necessary, a consultation group may be set up to consult stakeholders on the development of specific health and safety standards.
Consultation process
The consultation process flow chart (.pdf) outlines the consultation process.
Normally, the Workplace Health, Safety and Wellbeing (WHSW) team lead the development of University-wide health and safety standards to meet legal requirements for occupational health and safety. Occupational health related standards may also be led by the Director of People & Culture in consultation with the Director of Workplace, Health, Safety and Wellbeing.
Development of fire safety and premises-related health and safety standards will generally be led by the Estate Management Section, in consultation with WHSW.
Unions will be consulted through their safety representatives, who sit on Health and Safety Group. Heads of Department may be copied into consultations, but it is the Health and Safety Liaison Officer (HSLO) and/or Departmental Health and Safety Officer (DHSO) who should identify key consultees and communicate and coordinate consultations within their department.
The first draft of new or significantly revised standards should be accompanied by a brief outline of the reasons why the standard or proposed changes are needed. The Health and Safety Policy and revisions to it must always be approved by USG and Council.
Straightforward standards and revisions will be consulted on via consultation groups of key people identified as having a particular interest in the subject, either by email or meeting.
Standards or revisions to standards that will significantly impact on current practice must be approved by Health and Safety Group and University Steering Group (USG).
Generally consultees will be given four weeks to consult on each draft, unless there is a good reason why a shorter timescale is justified.
In some cases it may be necessary to produce a standard at short notice, to respond to a particular issue. In such cases consultation periods and the extent of those included in consultation may be reduced. However the Unions will always be consulted. The standard will also be included on the Health and Safety Group meeting immediately following its publication.
Consultation on documents
We welcome feedback on the policies and standards we produce. You can give us feedback any time and we will consider it when the document is next reviewed.
We will also publish documents undergoing consultation on this site, so that anyone can read and comment on them.
University of Essex documents
For significant consultations, consultation documents will be posted here to enable any member of the University Community to contribute their comments. No consultations at present.
Other organisations
Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA)
No consultations at present.
Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
If you want to submit comments on an HSE consultation document, you can either do so directly or forward them to the Health and Safety team, who will submit a response on behalf of the University.
Definitions
Policy
Sets out our direction, responsibilities for action and arrangements for implementation. The Health and Safety Policy includes a statement reflecting our ethos, objectives and the overarching health and safety responsibilities which apply to all health and safety standards.
Standards
These are our arrangements for implementing the Health and Safety Policy and meeting legal requirements. They describe what action needs to be taken and by whom. There are various types of standard:
- Codes of practice / Management policies and plans detail our arrangements for ensuring compliance with the law and gives details of what line managers, heads of departments and others need to do to meet their health and safety responsibilities as laid down in the University’s Health and Safety Policy. Generally these are produced for more complex risk areas, where detailed responsibilities and requirements are necessary. They are mandatory.
- Local rules are produced where specified in legislation (eg. ionising radiation regulations). They should normally be local to the area where the activity presenting the risk takes place.
- Generic risk assessments describe what must be in place to achieve a safe workplace and meet University/legal requirements in a risk assessment format. The standards within them are mandatory, though there is flexibility to suit local needs. Managers can produce their own assessments (to a similar standard) rather than use the generic ones.
- Guidance is short web-based information which describes how to meet responsibilities in relation to specific subjects. There will be a mixture of mandatory requirements and good practice, which will be clear from the language used.
Union safety representatives
Safety representatives are employees, appointed by the trade union they belong to, to represent employees on health and safety. They can assist any employee who has a health and safety concern (you do not need to be a member of their union). Find out more about safety representatives and how to contact them. Their contact details can also be found on the Health and Safety Law poster displayed in your workplace.
What must safety representatives be consulted on
By law, safety representatives must be consulted in good time on:
- the introduction of measures that may substantially affect the health and safety of employees
- arrangements for getting competent persons to help with complying with health and safety and for assisting with dealing with fire and other emergencies
- information that must, by law, be provided to staff, including risk assessments and protective measures
- the planning and organisation of health and safety training the health and safety consequences for staff of new technology that is planned to be introduced into the workplace
Further information
