Agenda item

The Committee received a joint report of the Corporate Director, Regeneration, Economy and Growth and the Corporate Director of Resources which provided the annual report on Health, Safety and Wellbeing (HSW) performance for 2023/24 (for copy see file of minutes).

Mr C Robinson queried the new tree management policy and asked whether the Council were responsible for every tree in County Durham.

The Corporate Health and Safety Compliance Manager responded that the new tree management policy had been put in place following the tragedy that had occurred in Newcastle where a tree had fallen and killed a child.  The policy included lessons learnt, how to manage risk and how to carry out inspections. The policy related to trees on council owned land and in open spaces.

P Darby noted that he understood that the issue in Newcastle was that the tree had been inspected but that action had been taken quickly enough as a result of the findings.  The tree management policy had tightened up targeted inspections in urban and school areas by risk and set out clearly the action that would be taken as a consequence.  If there were any concerns it would be intensively monitored and action implemented immediately.

Mr I Rud referred to chart one in the report that identified that within the top 5 accident categories violence and aggression was the highest causation.  He asked if this was an increasing trend.

The Corporate Health and Safety Compliance Manager confirmed that violence and aggression incidents (physical and nonphysical) ranged from staff working in children’s homes, staff within education settings and staff within traffic enforcement. Each role was risk assessed. Staff were trained in restraint where appropriate (e.g. children’s homes and the secure centre), de-escalation techniques and in some cases provided with body vests e.g wardens and enforcement officers.  Lots of the incidents were verbal threats and not physical assaults. Information was collated to take measures about the risks associated with these jobs to ensure they were constantly revised and controlled measures introduced to keep on top of the situation.

Mr C Robinson was shocked at the statistics for violence and aggression incidents (physical and nonphysical) within the Council.

P Darby noted that when incidents occurred, they were reported and managers had been encouraged to capture incidents so that there was a record of these and that measures could be put in place.  He gave an example of refuse collection operators being abused whilst doing their jobs.

The Corporate Health and Safety Compliance Manager stated that some areas were obvious where these incidents occurred but some there were some areas emerging like in the Refuse and Recycling where crew members had been attacked whilst on their rounds.  He stated that this was a challenge but the Council constantly assessed to ensure that controlled measures were adequate to reduce the risk.

Mr F Barnish asked if the RAAC issues were posing a financial liability for the Council.

The Corporate Health and Safety Compliance Manager explained that the Council had a programme in place that had looked at all Council owned buildings that this had thankfully found that none of the councils building were affected by RAAC.  The issues that had been identified related to schools and the Council had supported the relevant academy trusts with mitigations.

P Darby added that RAAC had major effects on a small number of schools within Durham who had been supported financially by DfE and this had not directly impacted on the Councils budget.

Resolved:

That the contents of the Annual Health, Safety and Wellbeing performance report for 2023/24 be agreed and noted.