Meet the winners: Edinburgh Napier University

The RoSPA Health and Safety Awards are truly all inclusive with entries from organisations of all sizes and from a wide spectrum of industries from the oil and gas industry right through to local authorities and education establishments. One such organisation is the Edinburgh Napier University, which is one of the largest universities in Scotland, supporting 18,000 students.

The university is a long standing entrant of the Awards Scheme achieving a RoSPA President’s Award in 2016 for achieving 13 consecutive Gold Medal Awards. We spoke to Liz Young, Head of Health, Safety & Wellbeing about how the university continue to deliver high standards in management of occupational health and safety.

Name: Liz Young

Title: Head of Health, Safety & Wellbeing

Company Name: Edinburgh Napier University

Location(s): Main campuses: Sighthill, Craiglockhart and Merchiston; Student Accommodation and various other sites

Number of Employees: 1800

Award: President’s Award

Why do you enter the RoSPA Awards?

We enter the RoSPA Awards as it gives us a great external benchmark to measure our health and safety management system against and helps us identify where we can improve.

Why is achieving a RoSPA Award important to your business?

It’s a great sense of achievement and pride to meet the standards and criteria of the President’s Award. It has also been an important accolade when providing our health, safety and wellbeing standards to other companies who wish to contract the University’s services and to lower insurance premiums. Furthermore, we are the only UK University to hold the President’s Award – a real stand out achievement!

How is health and safety managed in your organisation?

The university has a robust health and safety management system in place. The university employs safety officer Dr Gerry Webber, whilst Deans and Directors have day-to-day responsibility for health and safety in their schools and services alongside trained health and safety co-ordinators.

The health, safety and wellbeing team carry out a wide range of duties for staff and students in health, safety and fire compliance. The university court has recognised its obligations and the health and safety committee has taken a proactive role in raising awareness throughout the university. There continues to be a significant amount of activity around health, safety and fire issues to protect staff, students and visitors and in promoting health and wellbeing.

Forums for health and safety coordinators, fire wardens and first aiders have been set up to encourage networking across the university.

We continue to monitor and audit to ensure that the university has a robust and compliant health, safety and fire management system and a pro‐active and positive health and safety culture.

What is your greatest health and safety achievement over the past year?

In addition to winning the RoSPA President’s Award we have also gained the Healthy Working Lives Gold Award re-accreditation and held a very successful Health & Wellbeing Day for staff and students in April.