When you consider that the entertainment and leisure industry covers a fast range of live activities, from funfairs to sports and leisure centres and children’s play centres, you can easily see that it can be quite challenging for health and safety staff to manage successfully on a day to day basis.
Regardless of whether you are running a small village sports club or operate a large-scale leisure centre and swimming pool, it would be wise to invest in some sound and proven health and safety software for facility management.
Running a safe facility
The current Health & Safety laws and legislation should not be seen as a barrier towards the safe and secure operation of your leisure facility, whether you run the local amateur and youth football squads or manage a leisure centre with a gym, sports courts and swimming pool.
Keeping these facilities open for your local community is essential not only for the general health and fitness of the local population, but because your facility is an important part of your local community life.
Whether you employ staff at your leisure facilities or your sports club is run entirely by volunteers, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the regulations made under it, still apply to you regardless of your set up or structure. This means that you need to keep on top of your legal requirements to ensure your staff, volunteers or public users health and safety.
Volunteer organisations
The act itself spells out general guidelines and duties that employers, volunteer staff, club members, visiting participants and spectators must follow to protect themselves and others from harm. Even though many health and safety laws don’t apply when volunteers are running a club without any official employees, they will still be subject to abiding by these laws should they have responsibility for the care of premises or buildings, such as a sports field or a clubhouse.
In these cases, the person or people who have the responsibility of caring for the premises or grounds does have a duty to comply with the current health and safety act. This is important because operating even the smallest sports club or association can involve the storage and use of harmful substances, such as corrosive or flammable cleaning or maintenance products. The responsible person must ensure that the person using hazardous materials has been properly trained in their safe handling and care, which falls under the health and safety act.
Making health and safety management easy
Your legal duty will of course depend on the size and type of facility you operate, as well as the level of control you have over the premises as a whole. No matter how large or small your facilities are, you still need to ensure that everyone that works there or uses your facilities are kept safe from harm. You wouldn’t allow your gym members to use unsafe gym equipment for example, so it is your duty to keep all of your leisure equipment in a good state of repair.
All of this takes a lot of management and creates a lot of record keeping for you to keep on top of. Equipment safety inspections, routine repairs and maintenance schedules and electrical system check etc. all need to be done in a timely manner and the correct safety training and certification kept up by your employees.
You can keep a running record of all health and safety checks, staff safety training, inspection renewal dates, risk assessments and more by using Blue Lemon Health & Safety software. It is the perfect solution for a busy sporting or leisure facilities manager.
You can find out more about our flexible software solution or contact our friendly team to discuss how you can benefit from using our cutting-edge new H&S software. – Blue Lemon Press