How to get Involved: Insurance and Health & Safety

Insurance

If your group is organising practical activities or working with volunteers or children we would advise you to obtain insurance cover for your group.

It is vital that groups are adequately insured against damage they may cause to property or to the public. If insurance is not taken out, then the leaders of the group could find themselves personally responsible for paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds in the event of a serious accident. It is also important to implement effective Health and Safety procedures (see overleaf) to help prevent accidents.

Public Liability Insurance is the most common type of insurance small organisations use. This covers legal liability in respect of injury, death and loss or damage to property of anyone other than volunteers that come into contact with the organisation. The cost of public liability insurance will vary depending on the activities your organisation undertakes and the procedures your organisation has to minimise risk.

In addition, volunteers can be covered by public liability insurance although you should check this with your broker when you buy it. The minimum recommended amount of cover is £5 million pounds for this type of insurance.

Personal Accident Insurance provides compensation for volunteers, regardless of whether there is a legal liability to do so. This gives extra protection to the members of an organisation against accidents.

No insurance?

If your group does not have insurance make sure that all volunteers are made aware of this fact. If they are unhappy they do not need to get involved on the day. You could get volunteers to sign a disclaimer before the event to prove that you told them they were not insured.

 

Health & Safety

To comply with Health and Safety laws your organisation will need to show that it has :

• Examined the risks inherent in the workplace and in the working practices of paid staff and volunteers.
• Acted to mitigate or protect against those risks.
• Set up systems for reporting incidents.

In practice this means that the organisation should carry out risk assessments, put measures in place to help prevent accidents and then record any accidents as they occur.

Risk Assessments

It is advisable to carry out a risk assessment prior to an event. Carrying out a risk assessment involves:

• Looking for the hazards (e.g. trip, tools, fire, accidents).
• Deciding who might be harmed and how.
• For each hazard evaluate the chance, big or small, of harm actually being done and decide whether existing precautions are adequate or more should be done.
• Record the findings of your assessment – e.g. the main risks and the measures you have taken to deal with them

Helping Hands - Top Tips

• It may be that your organisation already has Public Liability insurance in place, which will cover, or can be extended to cover, your activities
• BTCV Scotland also provides insurance to groups affiliated with BTCV. You can get more information at www.btcv.org or telephone 0141 956 6816.
• Identify a First Aider for the event.
• Make sure all children are accompanied by adults.
• All participants should wash their hands thoroughly before eating or drinking.
• Appoint an event co-ordinator who will know the emergency procedures and who accidents should be reported to.
• At the start of an event make sure volunteers are made aware of how to handle tools / equipment properly and of the potential risks associated with the work they will be doing.
• Take care to protect wildlife if working in the countryside, parks, woodland or open spaces.
• The Volunteer Centre Glasgow provides excellent advice on health and safety and risk assessment, complete with examples of policies that other organisations use. www.volunteerglasgow.org

Download the Factsheet

The above information is available to download as a PDF fact sheet - Insurance and Health & Safety Fact Sheet PDF. You will need to have Adobe Reader software to view these. This software  can be freely downloaded from the Adobe Web site.