Responsibilities of employers include:
- appointing a competent person to help you meet your health and safety duties
- writing a health and safety policy (if you have fewer than five employees, this doesn’t need to be written down)
- consulting your employees on health and safety
- providing training for your employees on how to work safely
- displaying the health and safety law poster, or provide each employee with the health and safety pocket card
- completing a risk assessment
- providing adequate and appropriate first aid provision
- ensuring that in the event of fire, there is a sufficient number of competent persons to implement emergency procedures
- reporting any incidents of specified injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences, and keep appropriate records of any incidents.
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 etc., the employer is ultimately responsible for the health and safety of employees. Where the workplace is a school, the employer could be the Local Authority, the governing body, or the owner or trustees, depending on the type of school.
Employers are not legally obliged to provide first aid for anyone other than their own employees, but schools also have legal responsibilities for those in their care. Schools should consider carefully the likely risks to pupils and visitors, making allowances for them when drawing up policies and completing risk assessments.