The School of Biosciences is committed to providing and maintaining a healthy and safe working environment for all its employees, students and any other people who may be affected by its activities. In these pages you will find details of the School's health and safety arrangements, information and guidance on many specific matters and links to external sources of help and information.
Health and Safety management in the School is overseen by the Health and Safety Committee.
If you have a query about health and safety in the School or want to raise a health and safety-related matter then please contact the Biosciences Health and Safety email: biosci.hs@contacts.bham.ac.uk
School of Biosciences Workplace Safety Inspections
- The School of Biosciences is implementing a new schedule of workplace safety inspections. The aim of these inspections is to create a robust and transparent system of inspections with clear reporting lines and follow up to encourage development of a strong safety culture in the School.
- Principal Investigators (PIs) in areas to be inspected will be informed with a minimum of 3 weeks’ notice of an inspection and provided with a self-audit form to assist in preparations for the inspection. The inspection team will consist of senior management, a Health and Safety professional, members of academic, technical and facilities staff and at least one representative of the area to be inspected. A report will be produced within three weeks of the inspection and will be made available to all PIs. A follow up meeting between PIs and the inspection team will discuss the report findings and generate action points to resolve any outstanding issues.
- If you have any questions regarding the workplace safety inspections, please contact the Biosciences Health and Safety Coordinator on the provided email address above.
Risk Assessment forms and guidance notes:
- Requests for Lone Out of Hours Working in laboratories
The school has updated the process for out-of-hours access to the Biosciences building.There is no longer a requirement to email H&S address however the revised process is below.
Anyone wanting access at weekends and outside the normal working day (Including Easter and Christmas) must be included on the Out of Hours Risk Assessment for their research group/ area and have completed the Out of Hours Checklist. Access will not be granted without completion of these 2 steps. Also, this is only open to PhD students and Masters students (MSc taught and MRes), UG are not permitted to work out of hours.
Please see the steps below;
- ) The PI must;
Ensure the lab member has a clear understanding of the risk assessment and safety measures in place
Update (If necessary) the Out of Hours Risk Assessment for their research group/ area with the new members' names on it and upload it via this form LINK HERE
2. ) Once the PI has done this, the lab member must complete the Out of Hours Checklist via this form LINK HERE
- Access Requests The Facilities team have an online form to make the process of requesting building access easier and help to eliminate the number of emails that are sent back and forth. The form will help them to obtain all the necessary information to action the access requests in a timely fashion. The data is more centralised and this will help to maintain the security of the building and keep you and the everyone using the building safe. You can still contact the Facilities team via email if you have any issues with your card or if your access needs to be extended. For now they will continue to action access requests sent to their inboxes however over time they will slowly transition over to only accepting requests sent via the online form.
University-wide information: