CTN response to Improving Outcomes from Health and Safety: A Call for Evidence

Submitted 31 January 2008 

Charity Trustee Networks is a registered charity which aims to support trustees from across the voluntary and community sector in order to improve the governance and therefore the effectiveness of their organisations.

Charity Trustee Networks is an organisation which is continuously developing its reach to trustees through its face to face and online networks for trustees. We have over 1000 trustees signed up to our website www.trusteenet.org.uk, a quarter of which are chairs of trustee boards.  We have considered the call for evidence, have highlighted it on our website and have invited the views of trustees on the subject.  We are aware that charity trustees have a keen interest in the implications of the Health and Safety regulatory framework on their work. However, due partly to the timing of this consultation over the Christmas and New Year period, and partly to the time constraints within which trustees work, trustees themselves have not provided responses to the call for evidence.  We seek in this response to highlight the trustee perspective generally, based on our knowledge of and work with trustees. This includes providing an understanding of the particular situation of trustees and how this impacts on their understanding of and compliance with health and safety regulations.

Charity Trustee Networks believes that charities should provide safe and healthy workplaces for their staff and volunteers.  However, the method for ensuring that this happens should not be onerous, particularly on small and medium sized charities.

The perspective we represent is that of employers.  Trustees, as employers, do have real concerns over what they perceive to be unrealistic demands on them with regard to health and safety. As volunteers, trustees have even less time to deal with regulatory frameworks than managers or owners of small and medium sized businesses. Therefore, even a light touch framework can feel like a heavy burden.

While there is a large amount of information available about health and safety, accessing the information and advice pertinent to trustees’ circumstances may prove difficult within the time and knowledge they have. Also, in order to encourage small and medium sized charities to effectively manage health and safety, the information provided should be free.
We are often told by trustees that once they have found information about health and safety, they find it very hard to identify the minimum legal requirements and separate this from the next layer of what amounts to good practice.  They feel overwhelmed with information and the need to ensure they keep abreast of any changes. The Health and Safety Executive website does provide a way of staying current, but its profile needs to be raised to make trustees more aware of the resources it offers.

We do believe that fear of compensation claims has an influence on the way in which health and safety is managed in small and medium sized charities. It often means that trustees are more concerned with ‘form’ rather than ‘substance’.  If they can demonstrate that they have ticked all the boxes, they are more likely to be protected from a claim, but actually this may be missing out on much that they could do otherwise.

Charity Trustee Networks welcomes the opportunity to take part in this call for evidence, and we would be happy to work with appropriate departments and local authorities to -
• Explore in more detail how trustees of small and medium sized charities relate to the health and safety framework;
• Help develop and disseminate accessible and tailored guidance on health and safety for trustees of small and medium sized charities;
• Help develop and disseminate case studies of health and safety good practice within the charity sector.