This is UCAS’ policy setting out its commitment to ensuring the health, safety, and welfare of all members of staff, contractors and members of the public, and this policy applies to every aspect of UCAS’ business.
The Policy describes:
- UCAS’ commitment to discharge its duty of care to anyone potentially impacted by its undertaking.
- The arrangements in place to secure the health, safety, and welfare of all people to whom it owes a duty of care.
- It also sets out the expectations on employees, partners, contractors, and customers to support UCAS’ efforts to provide a safe and healthy workplace and to meet their own duty of care to others.
This Policy is supported by a range of other policies and procedures that may impose additional duties on specified employees in addition to those in this policy.
Introduction:
Health and safety law imposes a duty of care on various parties to protect the health, safety and welfare of others who may be affected by their acts or omissions at work. The main duty of care established is that of the employer to their employees. However, there are also duties on employees, the self-employed, occupiers of premises, designers and manufacturers or suppliers of articles or substances.
For employers, their primary duty of care is established through the employer-employee relationship in which the employer is required to protect employees from significant risks to their health, safety and welfare arising out of the employer’s undertakings. This duty of care is discharged by identifying significant risks to employees and implementing control measures, so far as is reasonably practicable, to reduce risks to an acceptable level. Employers also have a duty of care to protect the health, safety and welfare of anyone else who may be affected by their undertaking. Employers may delegate the performance of certain tasks to others, for example through the line management structure or by contracting out to third parties, but the responsibility for ensuring that the duty of care has been met remains with them. Consequently, employers need to implement suitable governance arrangements to provide the necessary reassurance that delegated tasks, including those contracted out to third parties, have actually been carried out, and to take appropriate corrective action where this is found not to be the case. The extent of any monitoring should be proportionate to the degree of risk created.
Health and safety law also imposes a duty of care on individuals to protect the health, safety and welfare of anyone who may be affected by the individual’s acts or omissions in the course of carrying out their employer’s undertaking. The extent of this duty will depend on the degree of control that the individual has over the way in which work tasks are performed.
Definitions:
| Competence | There is no legal definition of competence. However, in a health and safety context this is generally understood to mean having the required skills, expertise, experience, and training to carry out a required task safely. |
| Undertaking | Case law has established that, in the context of health and safety law, “undertaking” has a very wide-meaning and includes not only core business activities and functions, but also any ancillary activities, such as the cleaning and maintenance and repair of buildings, plant or equipment associated with the employer’s business regardless of who performs these activities. |
| So far as is reasonably practicable | This principle is applied to the management of risks and whether a duty holder has done enough to meet their duty of care. Case law has defined this as being about weighing risk against the effort (time, expense, resources) needed to further reduce it. The law presumes that the balance of this judgement should be in favour of reducing the risk. It is only if the effort is grossly disproportionate to the risk that this standard can be deemed to have been met. |
Policy Statement:
UCAS recognises that good standards of health, safety and welfare are an integral part of good management. The sensible and proportionate management of risk supports improvement and sustainability. This, coupled with the provision of a safer and healthy workplace, as well as safe and healthy work practices to support hybrid working, contribute to UCAS strategic aims of being an employer of choice where colleagues feel they can flourish, perform, achieve, and belong.
UCAS aims to meet its health, safety, and welfare commitments, so far as reasonably practicable, by:
- providing effective leadership and resources and access to competent advice across the organisation to enable agreed health, safety, and welfare standards to be met.
- clearly defining roles and responsibilities so that everyone who works at/with UCAS are clear of the contribution they are expected to make to securing their own health, safety, and welfare and that of others who may be affected by their acts or omissions.
- achieving legal compliance, as a minimum, but striving for good or best practice where it is appropriate and proportionate to do so.
- establishing health and safety as a key component of Business as Usual. UCAS’ planning processes will include the identification and assessment of the significant risks associated with our business activities and UCAS will act on these findings by implementing sensible and proportionate control measures to reduce significant risks of injury, ill-health and damage to property or the environment.
- developing and implementing safety management arrangements and associated arrangements, including arrangements to consult staff to identify agreed performance standards and how the achievement of these will be monitored and reviewed to secure continuous improvement and contribute to the development of UCAS’ safety management arrangements.
- providing adequate information, instruction, training and supervision to employees, customers, partners, and contractors to encourage ownership of health, safety and welfare matters and to enable each person to carry out their duties safely and to contribute to the overall delivery of the aims of this policy.
- taking appropriate, timely and proportionate corrective and preventative actions to manage intolerable risks identified by monitoring, auditing, and investigative activities. UCAS will review, and where necessary revise, this policy at suitable intervals (annually or following any significant health and safety event or material change in organisation or arrangements) to ensure that it continues to reflect our commitment and stated aims.
Dr Jo Saxton CBE
Chief Executive Officer
March 2024