How to Create a Risk Assessment

All clubs and societies are required to assess their activities for risk (by creating a risk assessment). This can be as simple as assessing a lecture theatre for slip, trip and fall hazards through to complex expeditions to countries around the world where risks are much greater and implications more serious.

Risk assessment should help you do the following:

• Identify hazards, i.e. the potential to cause harm.
• Assess the risk, i.e. the likelihood or possibility that people will come to harm.
• Decide upon risk control measures, i.e. the things you will put in place to ensure the safety of participants.
• Supervise implementation, i.e. check that control measures are being carried out.
• Implement control measures, i.e. reduce and if possible eliminate the risk to participants.

Core Risk Assessments

Each year clubs and societies are required to complete and submit a Core Risk Assessment during the annual registration process. You will receive more information about this process by email. 

Core Risk Assessments must cover any regular or core activities that you carry out, especially those mentioned in the constitution of your club or society.

Additional Risk Assessments

Any activity not included in your Core Risk Assessment must be registered separately and risk assessed by the completion of an Additional Risk Assessment form, which you will have to complete for any one-off events or activities throughout the year. This form will cover any activities that are not in your constitution or that you didn’t plan to do at the start of the year. 

Please submit your Additional Risk Assessment through our online webform.  

Step 1

The procedure is identical for core and additional activity registration / risk assessment. You can download template forms from our webpage. Once you have downloaded the file save it as the name of your society and the name of the activity. Fill in the details required on the form - for Additional Activity Risk Assessments you will need to specify the event dates and times.

Step 2

Before filling in the actual risk assessment (on the tabs/sheets within the document) have a look at the examples of risk (Hazard Checklist). These are not a complete listing of scenarios for risk, but should be used as a guide. Now return to the Risk Assessment Tab and work your way through the process of risk assessment from the left. You can request good copies or previous submission from your club or society as a guide from the Student Activities Reception.

• The first column requires you to state the activity type. This can be the overall activity title in most cases.
• The second column requires you to identify the hazard. This may require several rows to be filled in as most activities will have more than one associated hazard. For instance a social night out in London might have several hazards including drinking alcohol, over eating, getting lost from the group etc.
• The third column asks you to identify the consequences. For the example hazard of drinking alcohol the consequence would be intoxication.
• The fourth column asks you to suggest some control measures to lower the risk to an acceptable level. In the case of our example it could be for the group leader to ask everyone to drink sensibly. It could also mean the group leader doesn't drink so that they can keep an eye on the other members.
• The fifth column asks you to identify the Risk Rating which will be classed as Low, Medium or High.
• The sixth column asks you to identify the person responsible. In this case it’s up to the individuals to drink sensibly and the group leader to monitor this after asking them to do so.
• Finally in the seventh and last column you should identify what to do if this hazard does occur. In the example case a member of the group becomes overly intoxicated and is ill or has an accident. A sensible action here might be to take them to hospital if the situation was serious enough.

Step 3 (only required for on campus larger scale events e.g. in the Quad)

To find out who you may need to contact within UCL and Students' Union UCL Contacts for larger scale events (e.g. a ball, protest, food fair etc) you can see the key UCL contacts on the UCL Security Information Tab, which is on the Additional Activity and Overnight stay form. 

Step 4

For Additional Activity Risk Assessment, the form asks you to provide full details for an overnight stay. This is very important in case UCL or the Union are required to provide assistance or let relatives know of any difficulties the group has gotten into when away from Campus. It is essential this form is fully filled in as it will be passed to the UCL Security control room so that they have full details of your trip should anything occur that requires their assistance or action.

Step 5

For Additional Activity Risk Assessment provide us with the details of who is taking part in your activity. Again this page only needs to be filled in if your activity involves a trip away from campus and is definitely required for overnight stays and trips abroad. You can submit the participant details at a later stage, once the tickets or confirmation of attendees has been confirmed. Please ensure you send the form to us as soon as possible, with updated details nearer the date of the event.

Please submit your Additional Risk Assessment through our online webform.