Looking to help start up a repair group in Hampshire. During the insurance process one broker has asked whether volunteers receive health and safety training? It’s not something we’ve come across yet.
@London_Hosts could anyone help Kim with her question about H&S training for volunteers?
Hi Kim,
We don’t offere training but we have a h&s information sheet that we ask all new volunteers to read.
Rachel
2 Likes
Thanks Rachel, that’s really helpful.
Hi Kim and Shelini, We got lucky in that one of our volunteers is a retired nurse and her husband was a H&S officer at a large company before retiring. As long as you have one designated H&S person, ideally trained in 1st aid, you would comply with any H&S requirements, especially an H&S audit at the start of an event. Best, SP@HestonRepairCafe
2 Likes
Thanks HestonRC, greatly appreciated!
Hi Kim, our repair party falls under an unincorporated association that we set-up for wider environmental activities and benefit, and as such one of policies we are expected to have by funders / insurers etc is a H&S policy, and beneath this, a risk assessment for activities - obviously Restart has a template risk assessment for repair parties. But we are not expected to have H&S training. What you could do is find out what the local VCS (umbrella body for voluntary & charity sector) is in your area, and contact them asking for any help / info / guidance / signposting etc. I’d be very happy to share our H&S policy also if it might be useful, and there is an amazing charity in Brighton called The Resource Centre that has an architecturally deep website, but has lots of advice and templates for all things voluntary and is focused on small voluntary / charitable organisations. They’ve also been very helpful when I’ve e-mailed / called them, even though we are in Croydon.
1 Like
Sorry, forgot to say that we had a bit of a job this year getting PLI for our repair party, and insurers vary wildly in terms of whether they understand repair parties and are comfortable with them. In the end we used Wessex Insurance Brokers who arranged a policy with Ansvar. We previously used Unity and liked them as they were a social enterprise and linked with The Scouts but they were around 1/3 more expensive for slightly less cover if I remember rightly. Insurance is super-weird!
All really helpful, Ian, thank you for such valuable insights. We have an H&S policy now and I’ll check out The Resource Centre too.
Sort of.
We have decided that it is best to go through the safety guidelines verbally when we get new people along.
We did something on fire escapes etc when we first started but should probably do this again and do it every time we are in a different premises. It doesn’t always happen - I think mostly because set up often takes longer than planned or people arrive early and we run out of time.
It’s good that you’ve raised this. It’s flagged up that we should probably try to keep people out until we’ve done all the safety stuff.
Best regards
Lisa
Best regards.