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Risk assessment finally arrives at the Oxford Mail and Times

Newsquest, publishers of the Oxford Mail and Times, have finally started to address some of the concerns the chapel has been raising over the health and safety implications of working with new media.

Newsquest, publishers of the Oxford Mail and Times, have finally started to address some of the concerns the chapel has been raising over the health and safety implications of working with new media.

A group of consultants has drawn up a report which spells out, among other things, the importance of conducting proper risk assessments when sending staff out on potentially hazardous jobs. Team leaders and deputy leaders are all being sent on one-day courses to learn how to identify possible risks, weigh up their gravity and likelihood, and put in place appropriate precautions. Videoreporters are particularly at risk. Filming while walking backwards, and climbing dodgy structures to get a better vantage point, are both common causes of accidents. People can also react violently to being photographed or filmed – this is a problem recently flagged up by photographers at the Oxford Mail, worried about being asked to take pictures at the magistrates court of people who have been served with an ASBO.

Maggie Hartford is the chapel’s health and safety officer and a member of the chapel’s new media committee, which has long been pressing the company to address many of these issues. She believes the training courses represent a step in the right direction.
“It’s highlighted a lot of issues that we were concerned about, and suggested ways of dealing with them,” she said. “I think its raised the issue in everybody’s mind, and I hope that makes a difference.”

The company will no doubt insist all of this has nothing to do with the concerns raised by the chapel. In fact management is so hostile to allowing the chapel any say over these matters that when the new media committee wrote raising concerns, management replied to the FoC, presumably in the hope that the new media committee disappear if they pretend it doesn’t exist.

However, it’s not so many months since management dismissed the chapel’s concerns by saying the occupational nurse would be able to deal with any additional problems working with new media might entail.

“It’s a bit of a coincidence that they have tightened up on health and safety issues after a long campaign of attrition by the NUJ about various concerns, particularly to do with new media,” said Maggie. “It’s the first time in my 20 years in this place that this has happened.”