Health and safety policy

The management of health, safety, wellbeing and the environment will be integral to and equal with any other business function. This enables our organisation to meet its objective of managing and conducting its work activities in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and wellbeing at work of all its employees and others who may be affected by its business activities.

CITB is committed to the continual improvement of its business in terms of health, safety, wellbeing and the environment. It will meet the requirements of all applicable legislation, relevant standards, regulations and customer requirements.

CITB’s corporate strategy for health, safety, wellbeing and environment has identified the following objectives:

Health and safety

• No harm or ill health to CITB employees, learners and visitors on our sites and no harm or ill health to our mobile workers.
• Provision of a safe and healthy working environment that creates a good health and safety culture and promotes the reporting of all incidents and near misses.
• Regular senior headership health and safety visits and tours of CITB sites to help ensure standards are maintained.
• Best and most efficient use of information technology to enhance health and safety communications.

Health and wellbeing 

• An improved organisational understanding of health and wellbeing issues including mental health.
• An improvement in staff retention and absence rates through a programme of activities and interventions to support all colleagues, with a focus on personal and work-related health and wellbeing. 

The environment

• Production of an environmental sustainability plan.
• Improve environmental data recording for waste produced and energy use so to formulate how we can reduce our waste output and energy use.

Policy scope

This operational policy covers:

• All activities carried out by CITB that includes office activities, training activities and mobile working, at all CITB locations and contained within the physical boundaries of those locations. CITB colleagues are duty bound to follow the requirements of this policy even when working at another's premises.
• This statement of intent does not cover partnership organisation, colleges, training providers (not limited) that CITB works with and has influence and involvement.
• This policy applies to all people who work for or advise CITB including permanent, fixed term or temporary staff, contractors, interim staff under contract, people on work experience and agency workers. 

As the key decision-making body, the CITB Board of Trustees is responsible for the governance, strategic direction and monitoring of CITB’s health, safety and environmental management system performance against the agreed HSE policy. 

Our executive management team works to deliver the strategy set by our board.

The Executive has full accountability for health, safety, wellbeing and the environment within CITB.

The Corporate Responsibility Leadership Group (CRLG) has been formed with leadership team colleagues supported the attendance of technical experts. It brings together wider corporate responsibility activities that also include health, safety, environment, wellbeing, safeguarding, and fairness, inclusion and respect (FIR) under the headline banner of corporate responsibility.  The purpose of the CRLG is to:

• To provide corporate oversight and strategic direction to the organisation in respect  of overall CR policy, within context of the framework set by the Board and Executive.
• To monitor CR activities to ensure progress against strategic direction.
• Review and make fully costed recommendations to the Executive in order to add value and deliver benefits to the business by successfully embedding the core CR principles.

The HSE action groups consider matters of health, safety and environment as they affect staff and others in their area, and will make recommendations for improvements. 

They review all accidents and incidents of ill health that have occurred.  They also monitor safety in the workplace. The action groups are chaired by an appropriately appointed manager. 

The chair may also invite other members of staff to attend meetings whom he or she feels may provide assistance and advice to the action group. 

CITB’s Health, Safety and Environment Manager is responsible for the day to day management of health, safety, wellbeing and the environment within CITB. They provide and manage a management system that meets the diverse requirements of CITB’s organisation and strategic direction.

They provide advice to the business on legal and other requirements in relation to health, safety and environmental compliance. This manager is also responsible for delivering on the strategic direction as set by the CITB Board and Executive.

All individual managers and supervisors have responsibility for the day to day health, safety and wellbeing of individuals and the overall environment for their particular work area, function or location.

All CITB employees are responsible for ensuring their own safety and the safety of others that may be affected by their actions or omissions. All employees are expected to follow the requirements of all applicable legislation, guidance, advice and best practice.

All employees must follow the requirements set out in CITB policies, procedures, work instructions and risk assessments, which includes the requirement to report any un-safe acts or conditions to their line manager and via the SHE safety management system.

All employees must report all incidents (however minor) to their line manager and on the SHE system. 

Some employees have additional specific duties, these are:

• Fire marshal
• First aider
• DSE assessor
• HSE representative

Training is given for these additional roles and managers / supervisors will ensure time is allocated to allow the individual to carry out these duties.

CITB operates a safety management system, contained within LiveLink.  This will be transferred to SharePoint during 2018. The management system contains all CITB health, safety and environmental policies.  Wellbeing polices are held within HR. The management system is accessible to all CITB employees. 

The system is structured into various areas such as:

• HSE policy
• Procedures and work instructions
• HSE action groups
• CRLG 
• Audits
• DSE 
• SHE Assure 

SHE Assure is the system where incidents are recorded, this is done via an online portal, no log-in or password is required. All reported incidents are investigated. For minor incidents this can be a relatively straight forward exercise, for more severe incidents a full and in-depth investigation will be carried out. Controls are then assessed to ensure no-reoccurrence takes place.

The SHE Assure system is also used to report upon near misses and carry out risk assessments. 

Risk assessments are carried out for the following:

• General activities
• Manual handling
• COSHH
• DSE
• Fire
• Noise

Incident trends are identified and remedial action is implemented to prevent re-occurrences.

Audit actions and non-conformities are raised in SHE Assure for the appropriate manager. Actions are monitored for timely completion.

Health, safety, wellbeing and environment information is communicated to staff through a number of channels including:

• Executive strategic direction
• CRLG
• HSE action groups
• Team meetings
• Staff training
• The Hub
• Director blogs and Monday morning memos
• The HSE and H&W website
• HSE and H&W Yammer groups
• CITB Magazine
• Emails
• Safety alerts
• Office notice boards

Open and transparent communication is promoted at CITB allowing the transmission of information to flow up and down throughout the organisation.

There are certain procedures for all CITB colleagues regardless of job role, team or location. These procedures are for the whole of CITB operations, and include but are not limited to the following:

• HSE risk assessments
• First aid
• Fire arrangements
• Communication and consultations
• Safety training
• DSE
• Incident reporting
• Mobile and lone working
• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Further procedures / work instructions are available for specific teams, including:

• NCC training including the product areas for plant, construction and access
• Estates and facilities including portable appliance testing, asbestos management and registers and contractor control
• Residential, welfare and security

Work instructions are specific to the actual task and set out how to achieve the desired outcome safely and healthily. Work instructions include equipment necessary, PPE requirements, first aid requirements, environmental issues and emergency procedures. Work instructions can consist of step by step instructions, plans, drawings etc.

Specific work instructions are in place for:

• Scaffold structures
• Steeple jacks and lightning conductors
• Rope access
• Confined spaces training
• Suspended ceiling and partitions
• Concreting
• Steel fixing
• Plant operations
• Lifting operations
• Plant maintenance 

Pro-active monitoring is carried out by a programme of audits and inspections.

Audits are planned in advance with the frequency of audits dependant on level of risk. High risk activities are audited more frequently than low risk activities. Audits may be specific, such as for a legislation or standard clause audit, site / location based or across sites, or be general in their approach.

The audits undertaken are to check compliance with legislation, applicable standards and CITB’s own internal policies and procedures. Any non-conformity is raised as an action with the appropriate manager, together with a timescale for implementation. 

CITB is also audited by external assessors from BSI against the OHSAS18001 health and safety standard and the ISO14001 environmental standard.

Inspections are routinely carried out; these may be pre-planned or unannounced and provide assurance that standards are being maintained at all times. Inspections can be by work place, machinery, PPE, working behaviours.  If an inspection identifies a concern or issue; this will be recorded on SHE Assure for action.

Braden Connelly
Director of Products and Services, CITB
June 2018

• Policy owner: Braden Connelly, Director of Products and Services
• Policy prepared by: Jon Plumb, Health, Safety and Environment Manager
• Input provided by: Information gathered from health and safety management system and SHE Assure, existing CITB policies and reviews of previous years' health and safety performance.