University Safety Policy Index

The University Safety Policy is the main document in the management of safety at the University. It is supported by various Safety Policy Supplements and is guided by periodic Safety Strategies. In addition there are management documents (such as the "Roles of staff holding safety related posts") which provide details on how the systems operate.

Under the Policy documents come the Guidance documents that explain how to put things into action. These often quopte the policy documents or external documents in defining the actions needed for staff and others at the University to follow.

The University Policy is a document owned by the University Council and is very general (it is also hard to change since all changes need to be signed off by Council. The University Safety Committee owns the Safety Policy Supplements and the University Safety Office own the Guidance docuemtns (though they are normally presented to the University Safety Committee prior to publication).

Each University Management Unit (School, Institute, Service, Directorate etc...) are expected to have their own Safety Policies. These are owned at the local level and are subordinate to the University documents. It is not permitted for a local document to specify lower standards than the University documents.

University Safety Strategy

The University Safety Strategy Document and the associated Safety Plan are now approved by the University Safety Committee but are still being examined by EB and Council. Therefore these two documents are still officially draft documents.

How Policy is made

The University Safety Policy is drafted by the University Safety Office, sent out for consultation via the University Safety Committee, revised and then after the Committee sanctions it is sent on to the University Executive Board then to Council for approval and enaction. It therefore is a document owned by Council..

The Safety Policy Supplements are drafted by the University Safety Committee before being sent to the University Safety Committee for consultation and then approval and enaction. These are documents owned by the Committee.

Guidance on the Policy Docuemtns are drafted by the University Safety Office before being consulted on via the University Safety Committee and published by the University Safety Office. These documents are owned by the USO.

General Guiadance documents are drafted and published by the USO and may be provided to the University Safety Committee for information. These documents are owned by the USO.

University policies related to safety

You will find the other University policies such as the smoking policy and stress policy on the frreedom of information pages on the main University website  

• University Smoke Free Policy (this is on the internal ESS website) The page includes
  • FAQ for Staff on the Smoke Free Policy
  • FAQ for Students on the Smoke Free Policy
  • Map of Smoke Free Policy Boundaries
• Publication Schemes Documents
• Substance Abuse - Managers Guidance Notes

Accidents Statistics and other Incident Information

A key management tool is review of accident statistics and other 'incidnet' and 'event' data. These types of statistical data require careful collection and consideration before they are able to be made use of in deciding if the controls are having an effect or not. This is a serious problem at Universities across the coutry where many different methods are used to try to find a suitable way of delivering meaningful accident and incident event data. The USO undertakes the collation of these data for this University and also submits this Universities returns to the University Safety and Health Association. Anybody at the University wanting to have access to these data can do so by contatcing the USO and requesting the information. Persons not at the University may also request information in the form of reports that have been sent to the University Safety Committee, the Executive Board, or the University Council. Other information is currently considered confidential.

Registered users of the website (once their registration has been validated) can access the current graphs of accident data and trends for the whole University. These graphs are raw data and are not interpreted. Registered users will also be able to access the reports to Safety Committee, EB and Council, once the reports have been seen by these bodies, again using links from this page.

Link for registered users of the website only to the Accident Incident and Event statistics page

Comparator Universities

The following table provides basic links to the Universities that Newcastle is compared with when looking at league tables etc. This information is drawn from several sources and statistics on comparisons are not always available.

The data below is mostly drawn from the 2008 annual statistics, and is probably getting a little old now. Broadly the numbers do not change much from year to year but there may be some variations. The picture will be updated at some point with more up to date information but this is very time consuming so is not done very often.

The groups are :-

• The Russell Group of Universities
• Major Civic Universities with Medical Schools
• The Northern 8 Universities (N8) group - linked to the Northern Way alliance
• The North Eastern group of Universities

University Name	Russell	Civic	N8	NE	No. Staff	No. Student	Source
University of Birmingham	YES	YES	no	no	5,979	.	off-line
University of Bristol	YES	YES	no	no	5,119	17,700	Link
University of Cambridge	YES	no	no	no	7,627	.	off-line
Cardiff University	YES	no	no	no	6,000	26,000	Link
Durham University	no	no	YES	YES	.	.	.
University of Edinburgh	YES	no	no	no	7,926	25,000	Link
University of Glasgow	YES	no	no	no	5,807	19,650	Link
Imperial College London	YES	no	no	no	.	12,129	Link
King's College London	YES	no	no	no	.	19,700	Link
Lancaster	no	no	YES	no	.	.	.
University of Leeds	YES	YES	YES	no	8,000	30,500	Link
University of Liverpool	YES	YES	YES	no	4,500	18,500	Link
London School of Economics & Political Science	YES	no	no	no	2,780	7,800	Link
University of Manchester	YES	YES	YES	no	11,699	34,458	Link
Newcastle University	YES	YES	YES	YES	5,000	18,000	.
Northumbria University	no	no	no	YES	.	.	.
University of Nottingham	YES	YES	no	no	.	.	.
Queen’s University Belfast	YES	no	no	no	3,500	25,231	Link
University of Oxford	YES	no	no	no	8,419	20,000	Link
University of Sheffield	YES	YES	YES	no	6,000	24,000	Link
University of Southampton	YES	YES	no	no	.	.	.
University of Sunderland	no	no	no	YES	.	.	.
Teeside University	no	no	no	YES	.	.	.
University College London	YES	no	no	no	4,000	27,000	Link
University of Warwick	YES	no	no	no	5,168	16,646	Link
University of York	no	no	YES	no	.	.	.

Please note that the links go to non Newcastle websites and we will not know if any of the links are broken. Please inform the University Safety Office if these links do not work.