Employee safety measures: FOI response (reference 4802)
Contents
Date received
1 June 2020
Date responded
12 June 2020
Information requested
1. What steps has your organisation taken to ensure the safety of employees that are still required to work in the office over the course of lockdown?
2. What steps has your organisation taken to prepare or ‘COVID Proof’ the workplace for the full return of your workforce to the office when mandated by Scottish Government guidelines?
3. Please provide details of all COVID-19 related spending on PPE or similar.
Response
1. During the lockdown period (up to 28th May) only two members of Scottish Enterprise staff, identified as key workers, were given access to two offices for short periods on a weekly basis to undertake essential tasks. These key workers were issued with guidelines on social distancing, use of equipment, hygiene etc and their tasks were risk assessed with a safe system of work applied. The staff were also required to notify Scottish Enterprises’ Head of Health & Safety when they were accessing the offices.
2. A number of arrangements have been made to prepare our office premises. Since the Scottish Government’s release of Phase 1 guidance, discussions have been held internally to review and implement the guidelines. The main teams advising management are Health and Safety (H&S), Offices Services and FM, Procurement & Risk. Relevant staff are liaising with the Scottish Government Business Continuity community and sit on wider groups to discuss the various Scottish Government guidance to ensure the consistent and practical implementation of these documents. H&S, Human Resources, Internal Communications and Offices Services staff are also meeting weekly to define our operational implementation of the guidelines. Arrangements have been made for an advance party of five staff to visit our office premises to undertake site surveys and gather information. They will report back in due course and these reports will inform the relevant work that will be undertaken to meet the requirements under the guidelines and ensure we have suitable arrangements in place for when we eventually reoccupy the offices. We have set dates for the site surveys to be carried out: they will commence on the 9th June and finish on the 25th June.
3. There has been no extraordinary additional spend to date in terms of PPE relating to Covid-19, therefore section 17 of FOISA applies.
Contact us
For further information please contact our communications team, quoting the FOI reference number.