Health and Safety Policy

UCL’s overall objective is to provide and maintain a safe and healthy environment for its staff, students, people we work with and for those who visit. Health and safety is everyone’s responsibility, and a prime responsibility of all levels of management, and everyone is expected to contribute towards achieving our overall objective. UCL is committed to having a health and safety culture and performance that we can be proud of.

My aim, and that of the University Management Committee, is to encourage and foster a culture where everyone is aware of their individual health and safety responsibilities and is actively engaged and committed to improving standards of health, safety and welfare.
We expect every member of the College to share this commitment and to work together to achieve it. Nothing that we do is so important that it cannot be done safely.

We shall:

Plan improvements in health and safety management by:

• Developing the UCL Health and Safety Strategy and supporting high-level action plan
• Complying with legal, UCL and any other requirements.
• Ensuring the health and safety risks are managed to as low as is reasonably practicable through processes of risk assessment and risk control.
• Taking due account of health and safety risks as an integral part of our operations.
• Planning for the management of, and recovery from, any major incident that could severely disrupt normal operation.
• Providing adequate resources and setting of appropriate safety objectives.

Implement and operate effective risk control systems by:

• Ensuring that all work activities performed within UCL are performed by persons competent to carry out these activities or persons under appropriate and competent supervision.
• Providing employees with access to services to promote health and wellbeing.
• Providing premises, plant and equipment and systems of work that contribute to a safe and healthy work place.
• Maintaining and making available approved standards, arrangements and guidance relating to health and safety.
• Encouraging a positive health and safety culture by securing the commitment and involvement of our management, employees and those we work with through effective communication and consultation mechanisms. 
• Ensuring arrangements with contractors promote and actively support the implementation of this policy.

Monitor health and safety performance by:

• Continually monitoring performance through inspection and audit to provide assurance and to identify and ensure appropriate corrective action where required.
• Using meaningful proactive and reactive indicators to drive continual improvement in performance.
• Ensuring that root causes are identified in the investigation of incidents.

Review of health and safety management by:

• Undertaking regular reviews of the suitability and effectiveness of health and safety management, including this policy.
• Coordinating identified actions where appropriate into the planned improvements for UCL and appropriate governance arrangements.

The UCL Statement of Safety Policy shall be reviewed, revised where appropriate, and re-authorised annually by the President and Provost.

Dr Michael Spence AC
President and Provost

Signed: 12 August 2024