Health and Safety at a UCAS exhibition

An exhibition stand is a workplace covered by health and safety legislation. As the exhibitor, it is your responsibility to ensure a suitable and sufficient risk assessment is completed prior to your attendance, and adequate insurance is in place. Failure to do so could lead to delays, and ultimately, the closure of your stand. 

When completing your online booking to exhibit, you are required to acknowledge that you will implement appropriate control measures to reduce the risk of injury on and around your stand. You will be prompted to submit an exhibitor risk assessment, an Example Risk Assessment (that highlights the associated risks of exhibiting) is available for you to use or you can submit your own risk assessment.  

The control measures in the example Exhibitor Risk Assessment are in place to provide a safe environment for all exhibitors, staff, and visitors attending the UCAS exhibitions. This example risk assessment, while by no means exhaustive of the potential hazards, should highlight the key hazard areas associated with events of this nature.  

If needed, your stand my require structural sign off and/or earth bonding due to the nature of its size and or build. Please highlight to the Event Orgainiser and include your stand builder if this is the case, additional charges may apply. 

The example risk assessment can be download from your secure ENet account (exhibitor portal) http://www.ucas.com/enet.   

By submitting your risk assessment (and supporting documents) and agreeing to the Exhibitions terms and conditions, you will be agreeing, on behalf of your organisation/course provider, that you and any member of your staff will agree to comply with your risk assessment and that you and your staff will implement the necessary control measures outlined to prevent such risks from occurring. It is only intended to cover the period of time from arriving at the venue, to the point at which you leave.  
 
UCAS is required to collect this information from all exhibitors to comply with health and safety regulations imposed on us by all exhibition venues. When submitting your booking, please ensure:   

1. You have completed and submitted an Exhibitor Risk Assessment and if required: 
   - method statement  
   - scale drawing (if a complex structure or space only)
   - certification (if required LOLER, PAT and load rating certs) 
2.  You retain one copy of your Exhibitor Risk Assessment, method and certs for your records.   
3. A copy of your Risk Assessment is passed on to all staff members representing your course provider at a UCAS exhibition.  
4. You have submitted a copy Employers' and public liability insurance certs   

Exhibitors must complete additional risk assessments for the following activities (if applicable and not exhaustative):  

• performances on main stage  
• buskers stage performance  
• interactive workshops  or demonstrations
• any other additional activities (please discuss with the organiser).  

IMPORTANT
All exhibitors and contractors must understand and comply with UCAS' Health and Safety Policy and ALL safety measures set out by UCAS and Venue. If needed, your stand may require structural sign off and/or earth bonding due to the nature of its size and or build. Please highlight to the Event Organiser if this is the case, additional charges may apply.  Please email events@ucas.ac.uk.

If your University/organisation is using external contractors to build or install your stand at any of the venues, you should ensure you obtain a risk assessment from them and submit the following to the organisers from all contractors:   

• risk assessment  

• method statement (if a complex structure or space only)  

• scale drawing (if a complex structure or space only)  

• certification (if required LOLER, PAT and load rating certs)  

• employers' and public liability insurance certs  

These should be forwarded to the organisers at least  4 weeks prior to each event.

For more advice, please contact the organiser of the event for which you will have a space only stand.  

An exhibition stand is a workplace covered by health and safety legislation. As an exhibitor/contractor it is your responsibility to ensure that a suitable and sufficient risk assessment is completed prior to your attendance. Failure to do so can lead to delays or ultimately the closure of your stand.  

All exhibitors and contractors must understand and comply with UCAS' Health and Safety Policy and ALL safety measures set out by UCAS and Venue. If needed, your/your clients stand may require structural sign off and/or earth bonding due to the nature of its size and or build. Please highlight to the Event Organiser if this is the case, additional charges may apply.  Please email events@ucas.ac.uk.

If you require a copy of UCAS' Public and Employers’ Liability Insurance.

Visit Enet

Risk assessments and documentation that you need to provide to UCAS:

1. Your exhibition risk assessment - which includes the building of, and activities on your stand for all of the events you are attending - this can be the same risk assessment submitted once to cover all events if the activity and stand build etc. are the same at each event. If your activities vary by event type or for each event, a risk assessment is required for each variation. 
2. Contractor health and safety documentation - if you have a stand contractor building your stand, you will need to submit their risk assessment, method statement and insurance documents (RAMS) to UCAS. 
3. Check the FAQs below to see if your exhibition stand requires structural sign off or earth bonding. Please highlight to the Event Organiser by emailing events@ucas.ac.uk and include your stand builder if this is the case, additional charges may apply. 

4. Exhibitors must complete additional risk assessments for the following activities (if applicable and not exhaustative):  

   • performances on main stage  
   • buskers stage performance  
   • interactive workshops  or demonstrations
   • any other additional activities (please discuss with the organiser).  

The risk management process below serves as a framework outlining the necessary actions to address risks. It consists of five fundamental steps collectively known as the risk management process.

1. Identify
   Risks should be identified in the context of the outcome that is to be delivered. Once you know what it is you need to achieve or deliver (e.g. assemble, run and break down an exhibition stand safely) then you can think about the associated risks, i.e. the things that could happen that would have a bearing on the achievement of the required outcome.
2. Assess
   Once a set of risks has been identified, the next step is to determine how significant they are and therefore how concerned about them you should be. To help with this, first identify the cause(s) of the risk, i.e. if it materialises what may have caused it to happen? Then, determine what the consequences may or will be if the risk does come to pass. You are now in a position to determine the likelihood and impact levels of the risk, using the following guidelines:
   
   
   
   
   
   The overall risk score is simply the likelihood level multiplied by the impact level. Hence, a risk with a likelihood of 2 and an impact of 3 has a score of 6. This is referred to as the initial score, i.e. before any control measures have been put in place.
3. Plan
   Once each risk identified has been scored then an appropriate response needs to be planned. This will normally take the form of a series of mitigations or control measures, which should have the effect of reducing its likelihood and/or impact, or at least of preventing these from increasing. This should result in an action plan, with owners and timescales assigned. Having identified the actions that are to be taken to mitigate the risk, it should then be possible to forecast the risk score upon completion of the actions. This is the residual or target risk score. 4.
4. Act
   All actions or control measures must be implemented by the assigned action owners and within the agreed timescales.
5. Review
   Each of the risks should be reviewed to gauge the effectiveness of the mitigating actions and to ensure that the target score has been achieved. If it hasn’t then further action should be taken, where possible, or a conscious decision taken to accept the risk. This should be recorded.

Risk assessment template

Example exhibitor risk assessment 

Your event booker will need to submit your risk assessment via their Enet account, they can login at www.ucas.com/enet. 

On the menu, go to Manage Stand the Health and Safety. Click New Submission and follow the instructions to submit your risk assessment.

Ensure your risk assessment file name details your organisation name, what year of events it is for and which events it covers. e.g. University of England UCAS Discovery All Campus Events 2025 (or list all events Aberdeen London etc)

You can submit one risk assessment that covers all events providing the stand build and risks are the same for all events you are attending.
Separate risk assessments are required if your stand build and or risk varies at events.

Yes, please find a template below.

Risk assessment template

If your answer is yes to any of the following, you may require structural sign off, please contact events@ucas.ac.uk to discuss further:

• Is your stand over 4m tall?
• Is your stand bespoke?
• Does your stand have an overhang and/or any moving or suspended features?
• Does your stand have any raised platforms?

There may be other things that effect structural sign off, please check with the event organiser via events@ucas.ac.uk if you are unsure.

If your answer is yes to any of the following, your stand may require earth bonding (under current regulation) at an additional cost, please contact events@ucas.ac.uk to discuss further.

• Is your stand made out of metal?
• Do you have any powered features on your exhibition stand?
• If your stand includes any of the following your stand will need earth bonding: metal conduit, metal casing of apparatus, frames of motors, track lighting system,moving light, tv screen or LED wall etc.
• Your stand must be efficiently bonded to earth using the earthing system provided within the venue's permanent electrical distribution system, which the event electricians will implement at an additional cost.

There may be other things that effects earth bonding, please check with the event organiser via events@ucas.ac.uk or GES stand contractors for further support.

You may also find the following useful: https://www.aev.org.uk/resources/e-guide.