Reviewing health and safety policies and procedures to reflect current legal, national and local requirements

For this assessment criterion, you will be required to explain how health and safety policies and procedures are reviewed and updated.

Ensuring the health, safety and welfare of staff, service users and others is a very important part of a manager and employer’s role. There are several pieces of legislation and regulation that will be relevant to a health and social care setting – a list of these can be found here.

Your organisation’s policies and procedures should be aligned with legislation and regulation, so you will need to have an understanding of what each regulation entails. For example, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations require that employers carry out risk assessments in their settings, COSHH regulations related to the storage, use and disposal of harmful substances (which can include cleaning products and medication) and RIDDOR regulations mean that employers must report any occurrences of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). You may find it useful to refresh your knowledge and understanding of health and safety by reviewing the Level 2 Diploma unit.

Health and safety policies and procedures should be reviewed and updated regularly and your organisation should have processes and systems for carrying this out. You will also need systems in place to ensure that you stay up to date with any changes to legislation and regulation because you will need to reflect these changes in organisational policies and procedures swiftly.

Responsibilities for dealing with health and safety concerns can fall to a few agencies. HSE and the Local Authority (LA) will usually deal with health and safety issues that affect employees or visitors and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will usually deal with health and safety concerns that affect care recipients (if the provider is registered with them). For unregistered care providers, the responsibility usually falls to HSE/LA.

Although these responsibilities have been defined by the respective agencies in a Memorandum of Understanding, they will often work together closely in partnership.

Assessment criteria

Learners will explain how health and safety policies and procedures are reviewed and updated. Relevant and current legal and national regulations include:

• The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974
• COSHH Regulations
• Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations
• Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations
• RIDDOR
• Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations
• Food Hygiene Regulations
• The Health and Social Care Act 2008