• Resources: Risk Assessments and Risk Management

  • Risk Assessment and Risk Management

    All organisations have a responsibility to keep their staff, volunteers, and customers safe. A key element in ensuring this safety is mapping and understanding the things in your organisation which might put people at risk, and how to control them – this is known as risk management. 

    A risk assessment will help manage risk. It’s not about creating huge amounts of paperwork, but rather about identifying sensible measures to control the risks in your workplace. You are probably already taking steps to protect your employees, and your risk assessment will help you decide whether you have covered all you need to and what else you can do to protect your staff, volunteers and passengers. 

    CTA have worked with our members to develop a suite of resources to help you to do this in your organisation. If you would like to discuss this further with a member of CTA’s Support & Engagement team, you can email us at advice@ctauk.org 

    Restarting Community Transport Services

    Due to the coronavirus pandemic, community transport providers have had to suspend their usual services while the UK has been in lock-down. In response, we’ve seen our members step up to provide new and vital services to support their communities during coronavirus. As we start to gradually emerge from lock-down, community transport providers are also looking at how they can restart services that they’ve previously been unable to run.  

    A vital part of restarting any community transport service is a thorough and detailed COVID-19 specific risk assessment. Although risk assessments should always target the specific circumstances of each operation, there are a number of issues that will commonly affect most operators which need to be considered.  

    The resources on this page are available to download for CTA members and should be used and understood in the context of our wider guidance on re-starting community transport services which can be found here. 


    Risk Assessment ‘How To’ Guide

    This document is a guide to what you need to consider when putting together a comprehensive risk assessment, looking at what is meant by hazards and risks and key steps to identify them.

    Download


    Risk Assessment Templates

    You can use these templates to help put together both COVID-19 specific risk assessments for your organisation and general risk assessments. They include:  

    COVID-19 Risk Assessment Template 

    This is a COVID-19 specific template which gives some suggestions for areas you may need to think about when assessing risk related to COVID-19 and your operations. It is not exhaustive or prescriptive – you will need to think about your own organisation and what will need to be changedadded or removed to ensure it is an effective tool to manage the risks caused by the coronavirus.   

    Download

    General Risk Assessment Template

    As well as putting together a COVID-19 specific risk assessment, it’s also important to stay aware of other risks that come with operating a community transport service. This is a general risk assessment template with suggestions for areas you may need to think about when assessing risk, but it is not exhaustive or prescriptive – you will need to think about your own organisation and what will need to be changed, added or removed.  

    Download

    Blank Risk Assessment Template

    If you want to download a blank risk assessment template, without our suggestions included, you can do so here. 

    Download


    Managing Risk with Endsleigh Insurance

    On Friday 26 June, we were joined at our weekly member drop-in session by Ben Harris, Account Executive for Endsleigh Insurance Brokers to discuss how community transport providers can manage risk. You can find our re-cap blog here, or watch a recording of the session below. 


    Sharing External Resources

    The following are resources produced by you, our members, or others in the wider sector that we think are worth sharing.  

    Risk Assessment Examples from CTA Members 

    These risk assessment examples were supplied by CTA members to help us in developing our ‘how to’ guide and templates. They will give you a flavour of how CT organisations of different sizes and operating styles have approached assessing risk in their organisation. 


    UK Government Covid-19 Passenger Guidance Poster

    This poster may be useful to display somewhere it can be clearly and safely read by passengers, or sent to passengers ahead of their journey. It contains information encouraging passengers to think about whether their journey is necessary, what to consider when planning their journey, whilst on it, and after completing their journey.    

    Download


    Procedures from Green Community Travel

    Jenny Bright, Manager from Green Community Travel in Gloucestershire has worked with their team to produce a set of procedures for staff, volunteers and passengers which we have shared below:


    Public Health Stockport – Guidelines for Volunteer Car Scheme Drivers

    This flowchart, created by Public Health Stockport, looks at guidelines for volunteer car drivers and how they should decide whether or not to undertake a journey.  

    Download


    Glamorgan Voluntary Service – Reopening your Community Facility 

    This guide has been produced by Glamorgan Voluntary Services to assist Trustees, Management Committees and Officers of any community facility. It provides some useful tips and pointers to get your community facility ready for opening, and could be useful for CT operators who have facilities their passengers or other groups usually access. 

    Download


    PPE Guidance for NHS Volunteer Responders Working in a Patient Transport Role

    This guidance was sent to us by Green Community Travel and looks at Public Health England’s guidance on personal protective equipment for those working in a patient transport role.  

    Download


    All Wales NHS and Social Care COVID-19 Workforce: Risk Assessment Tool 

    This Risk Assessment Tool has been developed by Welsh Government to help people working in the NHS and Social Care in Wales to see if they are at higher risk of developing more serious symptoms if they come into contact with coronavirus. Some CT Operators may find this tool useful as they conduct risk assessments in their own organisations. 

    Download


    Royston and District Community Transport – Driver Disclaimer

    This disclaimer was sent to us by Royston & District Community Transport, and a number of CTA members have adopted it to help them get some of their volunteer drivers back to work. 

    Download

    Related resources: CTA and the TAS Partnership have also produced similar resources: download CTA’s checklist for drivers and download CTA’s daily COVID-19 checklist for drivers


    More information

    CTA Advice Service: The CTA team are currently working remotely, so to ensure you speak to the right person first time, please email advice@ctauk.org to receive a call back for advice and support. Our advice service operates 10-4pm Monday-Friday.

    Advice Service Drop-in: due to the changing nature of the situation, our advice team will be holding a weekly online drop-in where members can join a video call to talk to the team and each other about the latest guidance and ask any questions. You can find a recap of the latest session, along with details of our next call on ctauk.org/blog.

    If you feel like this page is missing something, or if there’s something you’d like to see, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the CTA advice service and let us know!