Risk Assessments

We know any activity hosted comes with risks, there is usually a level of risk associated with anything you do in your life. Society activity included. As committee members it’s your responsibility to ensure you’ve taken appropriate measures that keep you and your members safe. Risk assessments are mandatory and included in governance and policy of the SU, University and Higher Education legal requirements.

A person writing on a piece of paper.

What makes a good risk assessment?

  • Carrying out your risk assessment as early as possible will allow you time to consider all risks involved in activity.
  • Risk assessments should be updated as needed if any new risks become active.
  • Risk assessments should be tailored to events.
  • Risk assessments should be realistic and feasible and reduces risk levels.
  • Once a risk assessment has been written, make sure all activity leaders have seen and/ or have access to view it.
  • Actually implement your risk assessment at your events
  • Risk assessments should be completed by a “competent person”

Steps to a good Risk assessment:

This is something with the potential to cause harm.

You should consider:

  • Physical: Noise, Weather, Equipment
  • Safety: Spillages, Machinery, Vehicles, Electricity
  • Chemical: Gases, Liquids, Flammable materials, Pesticides
  • Biological: Bacteria, Bites, Viruses
  • Ergonomic: Manual Handling, Repetitive Movements, Workstations
  • Psychological: Workload, Bullying, Lone-Working
  • Organisational: Inadequate safety management, Reputation, Financial

This list may be broad or very niche and will determine what control measures you put in place.

Consider not just committee but all attendees, volunteers, members of the public, etc. Consulting with members or staff can help to identify who is at risk.

Certain hazards may pose more risk to certain groups of people e.g. those with medical conditions, pregnancy, under 18’s. You may wish to consult with your members about how best to approach a certain risk to enable them to participate in an activity.

This is as simple as stating what you currently have in place.

These measures could include things such as ticketing for crowd management; ensuring resources and equipment are tidies away to keep a clean area; or even ensuring your activity is carried out in a well-lit room

It’s important to identify everything that’s being done to control the risk, if it’s not recorded it’s seen as not being in place so even though you may think something should be common sense, write it down. Assume someone with no knowledge of your society or its activities is going to be reading your Risk assessment.

Keeping a record of your risk assessments is not just beneficial for handovers and duplicating events.

Being able to show that you have carried out due diligence, in case an accident does occur, will be important.

Keep a record of new risks you identify and how you might overcome them.

Time, activities, plans and people change.

You should review your risk assessments a few weeks before events are due to take place to ensure that its contents are as up to date as possible.

Consider if any new risks have become active and if the control measures you’ve got in place are enough to lower or mitigate the risk

Top Tips

  • All committee are responsible for the RA even though anyone can carry it out.
  • Record any lessons learned and change for future RA’s
  • Ask for help, drop into 1.24 or message your teams channel, Staff have to do risk assessments too
  • Work your way through your activity timeline, from the moment you are first responsible for your event.
  • Before you start writing your risk assessment,have a quick browse through your teamschannel or on the internet for exampleswhere other groups or organisation havehosted a similar event to you
  • Only add it to your risk assessment if you can deliver it
  • Consider out of the ordinary risks such as financial or organisational that are often overlooked
  • Don’t leave the Risk assessment blank, with “N/A or with “No risks” written in it, it will be rejected.

Scoring a Risk Matrix

Most risk assessments will ask you to score your risk.

This is usually calculated by how likely a risk is to occur vs the severity of it occurring.

Your control measures should bring risk down into an acceptable range.


Measuring probability of a risk becoming active:


Measuring the severity of that risk should it become active:

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