Post Brexit, the importance of business diversification for farmers (and landowners) has never been more critical, with many landowners now hosting events on their land as a means of generating additional income. Whilst potentially lucrative, hosting events, or allowing events to be hosted on your land by others, still attracts legal duties in terms of health and safety. Below, we explore what your duties are as an event organiser and how you can ensure you do not breach them.
Your duties as an event organiser
Event organisers have a legal duty to plan, manage and monitor the event to ensure that workers at the event as well as the visiting public/attendees are not exposed to risks to their health and/or safety.
Planning
Whatever the scale of the event being hosted, ensure that there is a clear understanding within the organising team who is responsible for safety matters. If you are not directly organising the event, this should be clearly set out and agreed in advance with your appointed contractors (ideally in the written contract between parties).
When selecting and appointing contractors, you must consider their suitability and competence for providing the services they are engaged to provide. You should ask contractors in advance of appointing them to:
You should consider whether you require to contact the local council and/or police if there is anticipated increase in traffic in the locality. If you plan to use your land for car parking, you should also check if this requires permits or other signage/traffic management.
Emergency Plan
The event should have an incident/emergency plan which needs to be proportionate to the level of risk presented by the event activities and the potential extent and severity of an incident. Once you have prepared your plan, for all but the smallest events with low risks, your plans should be discussed with the police, fire and rescue service, ambulance service or other first aid providers on site. Your plan should address some of the basic requirements, such as:
- getting people away from immediate danger;
- summoning and assisting emergency services;
- handling casualties;
- liaising with emergency services and other authorities; and
- protecting propertyStaff and volunteers involved in the organisation and running of the event should be informed of the emergency plan and the procedures to be followed.
The procedures should outline how they should undertake the following activities:
- raising the alarm and informing the public;
- on site emergency response i.e. use of fire extinguishers;
- crowd management including evacuation where necessary;
- evacuation of people with disabilities;
- traffic management, including emergency vehicles;
- incident control;
- providing first aid and medical assistance
Specific event staff should be appointed to implement emergency procedures in the event of an incident or emergency.
After the event
Once your event has taken place successfully, remember that legal duties to ensure safety on the site continue as part of the disassembly process. This includes aspects of traffic management, safe access and egress to the site for contractors/hauliers to remove equipment as well as security for the equipment over night, if appropriate.
For any further information in relation to health and safety duties more generally please contact a member of the Brodies Health & Safety team.
Contributors
Senior Associate
Partner & Solicitor Advocate
