240809Paper4ResourcesCtteeH&SC Minutes240424

Paper 4

Health and Safety Meet­ing Minutes

24 April 2024

Draft Minutes of the Health and Safety Meet­ing Held 24 April 2024

In Attend­ance: Kate Christie Pip Mack­ie Mark Pocock Colin Simpson Beccy Stan­ton Alan Smith Emma Stewart

Joined by: Kath­er­ine Will­ing – HR Officer, and DSE Assessor Paul Dav­is­on – Inform­a­tion Manager

Review of Minutes and pre­vi­ous actions:

1. Minutes reviewed as per action log. And out­stand­ing actions car­ried for­ward. Key points are: a) Rangers now all have EE sim cards to ensure there are no black spots for con­nectiv­ity b) KC has con­tac­ted all Head’s of Ser­vice (HoS) remind­ing them of lone work­ing respons­ib­il­it­ies, and need to con­sider what lone work­ing devices their staff should have. As an update, PM has cre­ated a ​“line Man­agers” page on Eolas, and there is inform­a­tion on this page about the dif­fer­ent lone work­ing devices avail­able and remind­ing line man­agers of their respons­ib­il­it­ies regard­ing staff lone work­ing c) Lone work­ing work­shop is on hold pending poten­tial devel­op­ment of new buddy form on Share­point, but in the inter­im, Beccy will send out an Eolas post advising all staff on the vari­ous PeopleSafe devices d) ELMS report has been tabled at Seni­or Man­age­ment Team (SMT) Policy Day

e) Rolling review of policies on hold pending a dis­cus­sion with Paul about poten­tial tools on Share­point to assist with this f) 2024 Job Plan tem­plate has been updated with a man­dat­ory line about everyone’s per­son­al respons­ib­il­ity for adher­ing to Health and Safety (H&S) Policy and doing the ELMS H&S train­ing g) Instu­tu­tion of Occu­pa­tion­al Safety and Health (IOSH) train­ing still to be sourced for PM, ES and KC h) Health and Safety Com­mit­teee (H&SC) minutes now being cir­cu­lated to SMT i) Acci­dent and Incid­ent (A&I) form updated, but Paul is in pro­cess of devel­op­ing a Share­point form that can be com­pleted via a mobile app. This will be much easi­er and sim­pler to use and will feed into a Share­Point log. j) Tow bar has been installed on peat­land 4×4, and enhanced 4×4 train­ing has now been sourced (which will include tow­ing) and rel­ev­ant staff booked on to it k) Guid­ance about tow­ing has been updated by Beccy 1) Nar­rat­ive re salt­ing went onto sign in app m) Auto clear­ing of sign-in app now set up n) Fire chief is very happy with our bespoke fire mar­shal train­ing, they don’t deliv­er train­ing on how to use a fire extin­guish­er, we have to source this ourselves which MP and BS will do o) Fire Mar­shal cov­er is com­pre­hens­ive, but Beccy will con­tact the 10 addi­tion­al folk who we iden­ti­fied were in the office reg­u­larly and across vari­ous loc­a­tions to ask them to do the training

Dis­play Screen Equip­ment (DSE) Review

1. KW presen­ted a paper set­ting out pro­posed changes to how we man­age DSE assess­ments. His­tor­ic­ally they had been done by one of the admin staff who had now left, and were clunky pen and paper exer­cises. We now have four DSE trained Assessor – Kath­er­ine, Jacki Mun­ro, Laura Byers and Sara Den­ner. But there wasn’t a con­sist­ent approach to man­aging assess­ments and the pro­pos­al was to try and devel­op a coher­ent approach and estab­lish con­sist­ency across all four assessors.

2. Cur­rently, we have a pro­cess map, which involves all staff get­ting a home assess­ment form which they return to the assessors, fol­lowed by a call with the assessor. But all staff have to do this annu­ally and it’s no longer feas­ible to phone every­one. So, a change recom­men­ded is that if the returned form indic­ates no issues, there will be no need for phone fol­low up.

3. Also, a new check­list to mim­ic the pro­cess map.

4. There are a lot of e‑mail tem­plates which need to be tracked and saved to ensure evid­ence of com­pli­ance. So, we have devised a new spread­sheet to help with tracking.

5. Also developed a new image lib­rary of equip­ment which can be tracked and checked, and also provide staff with visu­al options of tools to assist them.

6. The home assess­ment sheet has been revamped and it was asked if folk should have the option to opt out, giv­en all staff have to do the man­dat­ory ELMS DSE train­ing course. KW to do some research as H&SC felt opt out should not be an option.

7. The ask of H&SC is: a) Approv­al for the changes – approved b) Guid­ance for how long the inform­a­tion will be stored. KW to check this with PD c) What to do when issues con­tin­ue, des­pite DSE advice/​tools. Agreed that in these cir­cum­stances it would be appro­pri­ate to make an OH refer­ral d) Do we move DSE to Share­point. Agreed. KW to liaise with PD. e) How does DSE team inter­act with H&SC. Agreed access to each form will be lim­ited to the four x DSE assessors, but that a quarterly report will be sent to H&SC with anonymised inform­a­tion on DSE issues. DSE team to action

8. A mem­ber of the H&SC asked how long it usu­ally takes for a DSE issue to be resolved. KW explained that there is no times­cale cur­rently. Mem­ber of staff is invited to a video call, equip­ment then ordered and there is a fol­low up call in about a month. It was asked if we should identi­fy a time­frame. KW to investigate.

9. Dis­cus­sion about wheth­er or not a line man­ager should be aware of staffs DSE needs. H&SC felt line man­agers should be aware, but that word­ing should change to indic­ate that aware­ness would only be made if the staff mem­bers agreed. KW to amend wording.

10. H&SC sug­ges­ted that there needs to be some­thing in the pro­cess about advising staff to seek med­ic­al advice when appro­pri­ate as we will not organ­isa­tion­ally always be equipped or indeed expec­ted to deal with actu­al med­ic­al issues. KW to add wording.

11. H&SC agreed that for 2024, all staff to get the DSE home­work­ing form. There­after, when it goes out annu­ally, there will be the option to state ​“no changes since last com­pleted form”. KW to implement

12. All DSE will be migrated to Share­point. KW and PD to action.

13. H&SC asked what the situ­ation was for office based desks and DSE assess­ments. KW explained that each desk has to be risk assessed, which the DSE assessors can do for staff who have per­man­ent desk loc­a­tions, but staff who hot-desk have to do their own DSE risk assess­ments, guided by the inform­a­tion from the ELMS train­ing. KW and DSE team to con­sider office DSE further.

Review of Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE) limits

1. We have had many applic­a­tions in recently which sug­gest that our cur­rent price lim­its are low (last reviewed 3 years ago). The Peat­land team have high­er lim­its than oth­ers, yet there are oth­er staff tra­vers­ing sim­il­ar ter­rain to Peat­land team. We agreed that the lim­its should apply equally for every­one, and that we will increase lim­its for jack­ets and boots to £300. MP to implement

Acci­dent and Incid­ent Reports (H&SC respons­ible for review­ing all A&IR and mak­ing recom­mend­a­tions accordingly)

1. Three incid­ents: — α) 18/03/24:- regis­tra­tion plate came off the peat­land 4×4 while tra­vers­ing a fjord. Invest­ig­a­tion revealed this is a com­mon occur­rence and had happened pre­vi­ously, and staff mem­ber just arranged a new plate without let­ting any­one know about this. Staff mem­ber advised to always report such an incid­ent going for­ward. On this occa­sion, facil­it­ies arranged a replace­ment plate. Facil­it­ies to see if plates can be bolted onto vehicle. b) 19/02/24: — peat­land vehicle. Nor­mal access route was not avail­able, so officers were diver­ted to a dif­fer­ent route, but there was a lot of wind­blow block­ing the route (Glen­fe­sh­ie area impacted by the storm that clear felled huge areas of forest in Decem­ber). Single track road, few passing place and those that were in place were blocked by fallen trees. Officer became stressed as anoth­er vehicle was behind him, and one in front trav­el­ling towards him. He tried to pull over but didn’t see a fallen tree and went into it. Invest­ig­a­tion iden­ti­fied sev­er­al factors – stress, single track road, wind­blow, poor decision mak­ing. All the team are now

booked on to an advanced 4×4 train­ing course which should deal with these kind of situ­ations. c) 19/03/24 – mem­ber of staff exit­ing #16. Large back­pack on, when glass door shut behind them, due to very small space, the door pushed against the back­pack and staff mem­bers was pushed out the green door, land­ing badly on the road on her ankles, and quite badly injured. Invest­ig­a­tion iden­ti­fied that oth­er staff had exper­i­enced sim­il­ar (but didn’t report) and that space is indeed lim­ited. Decision taken to no longer allow this door for gen­er­al access, lim­it it only to a fire exit. All staff to be giv­en keys for main exten­sion door, which will become stand­ard entry/​exit point. Facil­it­ies have already actioned. d) AS explained that there had been an incid­ent yes­ter­day on a health walk. He will invest­ig­ate and report back at next H&SC meeting.

Facil­it­ies matters

1. E‑vehicles and jour­neys out with Scot­land: a mem­ber of staff had a trip to Eng­land and noted that our fuel cards for e‑vehicles do not work in Eng­land. The ques­tion was asked about how we facil­it­ate longer jour­neys to Eng­land in our e‑vehicle fleet. Cur­rently advice is not to use an e‑vehicle for such a trip but we will look in to this further.

2. Fire drill report. BS repor­ted back on the out­come of our recent fire drill. There were 18 people signed in, of which six were fire mar­shals. Gen­er­ally, it went well, and every­one was accoun­ted for with­in two minutes of the evac­u­ation being triggered in the app when the first fire mar­shal arrived at the muster point. Des­pite the pretty heavy rain every­one stayed in good humour until per­mit­ted to return to the building.

3. There were a hand­ful of points to note: a) There were two people who had left the build­ing pri­or to the drill and for­got­ten to sign out. They were accoun­ted for very quickly as someone had seen them leave. b) There was one per­son who needed a wee nudge to leave but didn’t res­ist once told that they did indeed need to go. c) One per­son had put their wet shoes from cyc­ling to work in the dry­ing room and gone to their desk in their socks. They then nat­ur­ally diver­ted to the dry­ing room to put their shoes on before evac­u­at­ing. We’ve had a chat about poten­tially keep­ing a spare pair of shoes in their lock­er so they can be in more of a state of read­i­ness. d) Most people auto­mat­ic­ally used a door they routinely use, rather than their nearest exit. We dis­cussed that in a drill on a quiet Fri­day, that isn’t really a

prob­lem, but that on a busy day, using the nearest exit helps to keep every­one spread out, redu­cing con­ges­tion. e) Anoth­er fire mar­shal asked wheth­er they should have grabbed the defib on the way out. We didn’t have the defib when we thought all this through and trained the fire mar­shals, so def­in­itely some­thing we should put some thought into. f) BS explained that she is still in the pro­cess of get­ting the Bal­later office to the same spe­cific­a­tion as the Grant­own office and will then sched­ule a fire drill there

1. Buddy Form: PD presen­ted a more stream­lined approach to the buddy form whereby it is saved out on Share­Point. It was recog­nised that whilst the lone work­ing policy seemed robust, the H&SC were not con­vinced that all staff were doing the buddy forms in line with the policy. By hav­ing them on Share­Point, this sim­pli­fied approach may remove any bar­ri­ers to com­ple­tion and adop­tion. This approach means that all the buddy inform­a­tion is owned and man­aged by the staff mem­ber. This data is saved in one place as one line. The link to the data could then be shared into an out­look appoint­ment, which has a tem­plate that PD is devel­op­ing. PD and ES and KC to dis­cuss further

2. PD also sug­ges­ted that we stream­line our Acci­dent & Incid­ent Report­ing forms onto Share­Point, such that they could even be com­pleted on a phone app, in ​“real time”. PS and KC to explore further

Ranger mat­ters

1. Noth­ing fur­ther to report

Peat­land matters

1. Noth­ing fur­ther to report

AOB

1. Fur­ther to the dis­cus­sion at the last meet­ing about deliv­ery / stor­age of large items of kit, the Con­ser­va­tion team had budget to pur­chase a trail­er. PM was in the pro­cess of arran­ging train­ing for staff who inten­ded using the trailer.
2. BS in the pro­cess of mov­ing H&S files / folders onto Share­Point. PD to cre­ate a Team’s chan­nel for H&SC

Action log

Actions from this meet­ing – 18/04/24 |Action| Respons­ible per­son and Status| | — -| — -| |Eolas post to all staff about PeopleSafe options.|BS| |Fire extin­guish­er training|BS| |DSE actions:- Research to see if WFH DSE opt-out is accept­able How long should we retain the DSE forms Quarterly report of DSE issues to be tabled at H&SC meet­ings DSE time­frames to be invest­ig­ated Amend word­ing re line man­ager aware­ness of DSE issues Add word­ing about seek­ing med­ic­al advice DSE home­work­ing form to be cir­cu­lated DSE to be migrated to Share­point Office based DSE to be con­sidered and brought back to H&SC|KW and DSE team with assist­ance from PD where appro­pri­ate| |New high­er PPE lim­its to be updated on policy|MP| |Con­sid­er­a­tion is vehicle reg plates can be bolted onto vehicles|Facilities| |Report back to H&SC incid­ent on Health walk|AS| |Buddy form to be set up on SharePoint|PD| |A&IR form to be set up on SharePoint/App|PD| |Teams chan­nel for H&SC|PD|

Actions from last meet­ing – 11/01/24 |Action| Respons­ible per­son and Status| | — -| — -| |Request Ranger EE sim from IT team.|KC — com­pleted| |Con­tact the key Heads of Ser­vice of remote work­ers and ask them to con­sider the needs of their remote work­ers and let facil­it­ies know if they require devices|KC — com­pleted| |Con­tact Heads of Ser­vice and remind them of the Lone Work­ing policy and respons­ib­il­it­ies for their staff|KC — com­pleted| |Pro­duce a report of who has/hasn’t com­pleted ELMS train­ing to be tabled at the next SMT Policy Day.|PM — com­pleted and ongoing|

|Devel­op a sched­ule of rolling review of H&S policies.|KC| |Check with Paul if there was a func­tion whereby staff could be asked to sign that they had read the policy, and also if remind­ers could be set up|BS| |Update Job Plan tem­plate with man­dat­ory line about staff mem­bers respons­ib­il­ity re H&S train­ing and policy compliance.|KC — com­pleted| |Arrange IOSH course for ES and refresh­er for PM and KC.|PM — in hand| |Cir­cu­late H&SC minutes for SMT sight and discussion|KC — com­pleted and ongo­ing| |Update AIR form to identi­fy loc­a­tion of 1^st aid sup­plies used so that we can replen­ish accord­ingly. Also to ensure that hard cop­ies of A&IR form are replace with the most up to date form as the one used was about 2 years out of date.|MP — com­pleted but over­haul of exist­ing approach cur­rently under con­sid­er­a­tion| |Advise HR of the enhanced train­ing require­ments the 4×4 users needs, and HR to source train­ing accordingly|ES — com­pleted| |Speak to mech­an­ic at gar­age to get guid­ance re tow­ing and if appro­pri­ate, draft appro­pri­ate guidance.|BS — com­pleted| |Put nar­rat­ive into the news­let­ter remind­ing people to salt pub­lic areas if first in.|BS — com­pleted| |Put a mes­sage on the sign-in app remind­ing staff of their respons­ib­il­it­ies re salt­ing pub­lic spaces/​access. To be done this week and next as very cold weath­er fore­cast so this is cur­rent and topical|BS — com­pleted| |Auto­mat­ic mid night clear­ing of staff still signed in to be implemented|BS — com­pleted| |Speak to the new area fire chief to see if there is any addi­tion­al train­ing fire mar­shalls need e.g. how to use a fire extin­guish­er and will either source that or ensure she and MP cov­er that on the on-site course|BS — com­pleted| |Map­ping exer­cise to see if exit­ing fire mar­shals will be suf­fi­cient, review­ing their work­ing pat­terns, and work loc­a­tions. And then to con­tact these folk, explain that we may still require them if the map­ping sug­gest insuf­fi­cient cover|BS — in hand|

|Pub­li­cise ​“hold­ing meet­ings in office on office shut down days” guidance|BS — com­pleted| |Cir­cu­late All Staff diary invit­a­tion for agreed 2024 office shut down dates|BS — com­pleted| |Staff to be advised to arrange for kit to be delivered to the site, or to arrange for a hire vehicle to trans­port it. KC to flag to SMT for down­ward dissemination|KC — trail­er has now been pur­chased for Con­ser­va­tion team and train­ing in progress.|

Actions out­stand­ing from pre­vi­ous meet­ings |Meet­ing Date|Action|Responsible per­son| | — -| — -| — -| |28/09/23|Buddy Sys­tem to be reviewed and Con­sider a Buddy Sys­tem work­shop for staff Line Man­ager leaf­let (work in pro­gress) to include ref­er­ence to lone work­ing pro­ced­ure Green Health Link Work­ers stand­ard oper­at­ing pro­ced­ure to come back to H&SC|On hold pending migra­tion of buddy form onto share­point ​“leaf­let” now a Eolas page instead, with a sep­ar­ate lone work­ing page In pro­gress| |July 2023|Mixer taps in #16 to be explored|Now installed| |14/09/22|H&SC should have sight of team spe­cif­ic risk assessments|CS and ES| |19/07/22|Additional loch mech­an­ism for main door exten­sion to be investigated|On going|

|19/03/19|Ballater Pan­ic alarm — the alarm is to be moved to the CNPA office when the office is recon­figured. A peep hole will be put in the intern­al door of the office, as cur­rently staff are not able to see who is at the door if the knock|MP (on hold pending work to com­mence recon­fig­ur­a­tion of office). MP to get a quote any­way to hold on record.|