Schools - violent, aggressive and dangerous behaviour: risk assessment guidance
This guidance provides clarity to local authorities and educational settings on appropriately using risk assessment processes to mitigate or minimise violent, aggressive, and dangerous behaviours exhibited by children and young people at school.
Appendix 1: Health and safety legislation basics
Every person owes a duty to take reasonable care for those whom it is foreseeable will be affected by their actions. Further, there is an implied term in contracts of employment that employers are to take reasonable care for their employees’ safety.
Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, employers are to secure the health, safety, and welfare of persons at work and to protect others against risks to health or safety in connection with the activities of persons at work.
As an employer, local authorities are subject to the general duty to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all their employees at work and to carry on their business so as to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that people other than their employees are not exposed to risks to their health and safety.
Employees are to take reasonable care for their own health and safety and that of others and must cooperate with their employer (or other relevant persons) to enable them to carry out any health and safety duties imposed on them.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to carry out suitable and sufficient health and safety risk assessments for the purpose of identifying appropriate measures to ensure health and safety of employees and persons other than employees to whom health and safety risks may arise out of the employer’s business. The significant findings of this health and safety risk assessment, as well as any group of employees identified as being especially at risk, are to be recorded.
Employers are also to make and give effect to such arrangements as are appropriate for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventive and protective measure and provide employees with comprehensible and relevant information on the risks to their health and safety identified in the risk assessment and the preventative and protective measures. Such arrangements require to be recorded.