Rank: New forum user 
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Hi Our H&S Policy is coming up for its annual review in next few weeks. Interested to know if its neccessary to add arrangements for COVID 19 to policy or not as its already covered within risk assessments for site and office which are under constant review.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I don't see any value in adding this to the policy. Does your policy list all the other hazards that you have control measures for?
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 2 users thanked Kate for this useful post.
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Rank: Forum user
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No need, have this as a separate statement and then when Covid has gone, HA HA, you can chuck it in the bin. Your H&S policy should already broadly outline arrangements for risk assessments procedures. Don’t bury yourself in paperwork.
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4 users thanked wardy for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I see that you state that Covid-19 is covered in your existing risk assessments. With a chemical you know whether or not it is on the premises, what are its hazards when used, where it is used and what is the actual/potential exposure. You therefore have the facts that you can use to assess the risk. I wonder how you do this for SARS-Cov-2. How do you assess the risk of damage to health to a hazard when you do not know whether it is present in your workplace (i.e. do you have any persons present, whether or not 'infected' but perhaps 'colonised' and thus asymptomatic and not detectable by current test methods), where it is present (who are these persons?), or what level of exposure exists (not all carriers are donors and the level of emission can vary from very little to the 'superspreader') ), and since you do not know who the emitter is or the route of transmission (direct or indirect) - so who could be exposed and the level of this exposure? For me the 'traditional' process for risk assessment cannot be reliably applied to the SARS-Cov-2 problem.
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2 users thanked chris.packham for this useful post.
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Rank: Forum user
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All risk assessments are a “what if” potential, likelihood etc. The same principle should be used with this virus. As an example. I live in a small close of just 5 properties. One of my neighbours decided it would be a good idea to distribute unsold food from Tesco’s etc, its some organisation to save land fill. This meant that people, during lockdown, were coming up the close collecting their free food. Many of these people were not wearing face masks. Now for me to do a risk assessment I didn’t need a physical hazard to be in front of me. It was obvious that during a lockdown, if we had people passing, collecting food, which had been handled by many, there was a good chance of COVID-19 would strike. On top of this 3 of the properties on the close have venerable residence i.e. old and health problems. I did a mental risk assessment, as you do with these things, and concluded that the risk of someone catching COVID-19 was high. I approach my neighbour and express my feelings and said I thought he was putting people at risk. He said I was talking nonsense and his wife said I was a bigot. This was 2 weeks ago. Yesterday, sadly, his immediate neighbour died of COVID-19 and today his wife was taken into hospital with it. So in answer, anything can be assessed for risk physically present or not.
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1 user thanked wardy for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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In my comments I was referring to attempting to carry out a risk assessment for a workplace. What you have described is a different scenario where people are not following sensible practice and therefore creating a risk through their deliberate actions. Quite different from the scenario that I was concerned with where people are having to work together usually within a building and possibly without being able to maintain what we have decided should be a safe distance (although that may or may not be 2m.) or handling objects that others have also handled.
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Rank: Forum user
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Rank: New forum user
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My understanding is that COVID secure Risk assessments have to be done for the workplace as per current HSE Guidance before any return to work. Hence the reason we have done them. Understand that the risk relating to virus is not as specific as use of chemical or a particular task but risks associated with Covid still need to be assessed to understand and implement any controls that need to be put in place to help prevent the spread and ultimately protect the workforce, visitors etc. As our arrangements for Risk assessments in general are covered in the H&S Policy im satisfied based on the feedback received in this thread that no further reference is required in the Policy. Thanks for the input
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1 user thanked Simon Sharp for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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First, the H&S policy statement is just needs to be a one document which says we believe in H&S and we follow all legal and moral requirements. You then add how you might do this without going into specific details ;it’s not a procedure or RAMS it’s an overarching policy. As far as Covid-19 goes the so called risk assessment is no such thing. All we are doing is creating a check list to confirm that we are applying all of the controls required by the government. We are not deciding which risks exist and which controls to apply, which is the point of a proper risk assessment under H&S law. Edited by user 28 January 2021 10:37:02(UTC)
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5 users thanked A Kurdziel for this useful post.
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