All groups will be required to complete an annual risk assessment. This is to ensure that you have identified all of the Hazards and Risks within your proposed Activities, and uphold your Duty of Care for your members and those who could be affected by the risks within your activities. 

What should be covered in your Annual Risk Assessment?

All activities events the group will be running over the academic year, excluding...

• Overnight trips
• External speakers
• Performances 
• Large-scale events (Over 150 attendees). 

These will require an individual risk assessment. Find out more here

Deadline for submission

Groups should have completed their annual risk assessments by 31 July at the latest. This will ensure the Activities team can sign of your Annual R/A in time for Welcome week, and the start of the Academic year. 

You can amend you annual risk assessment throughout the year if you need to add activities/events. Just update your annual risk assessment, add to the activity log and submit it as usual. 

Steps for submitting your annual risk assessment

There are 4 steps to submitting your annual risk assessment 

1. Complete training
2. Download and read the risk assessment guidance
3. Download and fill in the annual risk assessment template using the training and guidance
4. Submit your risk assessment to the portal before July

We'll go into each step in detail below!

1. Complete required training

• All committee members must complete either in person or remote events training, which covers risk assessing and group safety.

You can access the remote course here: Click me

2. Download Guidance 

• The "Student Committee handbook for risk assessing and group safety" has been created to walk you through the risk assessing process. 
• Download a copy of this guide and use it as a tool to help you write your risk assessments and plan safe activities and events. 

You can access the guide here: Click me

• We also have guidance on what hazards you might expect to encounter whilst running your activities, and how to reduce, or mitigate, the risk presented by these hazards.

You can access this guidance here: Click me

3. Download and fill in the template

• Download the Annual risk assessment template and begin populating it with your Activities and Events: 

Annual Risk Assessment Template: Click me

•  To assist you with risk assessing we have created an example of an annual risk assessment: 

Annual Risk Assessment example: Click me

Events that require individual risk assessing:

As mentioned, there are four types of events that cannot be covered by the annual risk assessment:

• Events involving external speakers
• Events involving an overnight stay/trips
• Events involving a large scale musical/theatre performance or show
• Events involving over 150 attendees (Large-scale events)

If you group is holding one of the following, please read the article linked here. 

What to include in your annual risk assessment:

The annual risk assessment should include all the different types of activities you do. If you run regular scheduled activities you do not need to submit a risk assessment for each one, just one assessment covering them all. 

For example:

• If your group runs a series of different dance style classes, this can be covered in one dance class risk assessment (but you should tell us how often you do it)
• If your group runs regular socials at different pubs, this can be covered by one pub social risk assessment.

Examples of the different category risk assessments you could include are:

• Sports/Fitness/Dance class/training/activity
• Talk/ Q&A / Debate (internal speakers only)
• Music/Theatre rehearsals
• Pub Social
• Film Screening
• Hobby based class/workshop
• Training
• Meet Up
• Information Stall
• Cooking workshops
• Games social
• Vulnerable People volunteering
• School based volunteering
• Restaurant social
• Bake sale
• Fundraiser
• Winter/Spring Balls
• Intramural / Social sports

4. Submit your annual risk assessment

• Once your annual risk assessment is complete, this needs to be submitted via the form here. 

Annual risk assessment submission form -Click me

• Risk assessments submitted via email will not be reviewed.
• A member of the activities team will then review this assessment for approval within 10 working days (or sooner if we can!). 
• If there are any changes that are required a member of the team will be in touch to talk these through with you. If your annual risk assessment has not been reviewed after ten working days, please feel free to email activities@exeterguild.com and chase this up.
• We may also be in touch if we deem any identified activities to be high risk that may require further consideration/mitigations.
• Once your annual risk assessment is approved, you will be able to notify us of any events you run covered by this risk assessment by adding your event straight onto your society's FIXR account, For more information regarding your society's fixr, read the article here - Click me 

Event Budgets:

• For events costing over £500, it is also compulsory for you to create an event budget. These won't need to be submitted to us, except for performances, large-scale events and trips abroad, but we may still ask to see them to ensure a group has considered costs when planning large events. 

Event budget templates can be found here. 

• If you have any questions about completing your risk ratings, please feel free to email activities@exeterguild.com, or book a drop-in (hyperlinked), and a member of our team can talk these through with you.

Amending your annual risk assessment

• Often, after an annual risk assessment has been submitted, societies will decide to run events that they didn't include in the initial submission.
• In this instance, you can to add the event to your existing annual risk assessment, note on it what's changed in the activity log and then resubmit this for approval via the same portal. 
• There is an option in the submission form to specify that the risk assessment is an updated version of one which was previously submitted.
• Please go here for more information on amending your risk assessment.