Parish Councils' Health & Safety Guidance

Risk Assessments should be undertaken by Parish Council's for all their activities, both those that take place regularly and one-off events. Lancashire County Council has developed a general risk assessment for use by Parish Council's when they are developing their own risk assessments. 

To further assist Parish Councils with their own risk assessment development the County Council can provide access to other occupational general risk assessments upon request by e-mail to health.safety@lancashire.gov.uk.

Parish Councils may use a general risk assessment as a starting point when developing their own risk assessments, but must amend and add to the hazards and risk controls to reflect their own local arrangements.

General guidance on how to undertake a Risk Assessment is freely available on the Health and Safety Executive's web site – Risk Management.

In Part 1 of the Parish Council's Event General Risk Assessment, the general hazards associated with each activity or location have been listed along with their appropriate control measures. If these cover existing local circumstances, the risk assessment can be signed off by the person completing it and the assessment can be adopted for use. If some of the control measures are not in place but should be, these can be extracted from Part 1 of the risk assessment form and transferred to the Action Plan for future development by the Parish Council.

 

If there are other hazards that have been identified locally but have not been included in the General Risk Assessment, these should be added to Part 2 of the risk assessment form together with any appropriate control measures that the Parish Council has in place. If any further control measures are required, these again should be recorded in the Action Plan. 
 

Once all the actions have been completed the Risk Assessment will need to be signed off by the person completing it and it can be adopted for use. The risk assessment will then need to be reviewed, and if necessary updated, at regular intervals (annually recommended).  A review will be required sooner if an incident or accident occurs, or if there are significant changes that affect it.