Over the last few years, health and safety for events has been at the forefront of creators’ minds. Finding ways to look after your guests and adhering to regulations are essential parts of your planning list.

As an organizer, you’ll want to ensure the safety of attendees and staff. That means taking reasonable steps to prevent harm from coming to anyone involved in your event and planning for emergencies. The larger your event, the more challenging this can be. That said, risk assessment for smaller community events is equally important; safety always comes first.

To help you along your health and safety journey, here are the main aspects to consider when event planning. Your final safety checklist will be more extensive, but this is a great place to start. Remember to stay on top of government guidance and reach out to local officials if you’re unsure.

Assess the suitability of your venue

Venue

Start with a written profile of your event, including all the activities that will take place and the estimated audience size and demographics (i.e. children, the elderly, or disabled people will have different needs). With this in mind, visit your event venue before booking to assess its suitability.

Factors to consider include:

Once you’ve confirmed the suitability of your venue for an inclusive event, draft a site plan indicating where the structures, facilities, fencing lines, entrances, and exits will be. Make the plan available to all contractors, suppliers, and staff working on the event.

Do a risk assessment with an event health and safety checklist

Covid measures

Event risk assessment is easier with a health and safety checklist. It lets you think about potential risks to safety at your event and rate them. A scale from one to five can be helpful, with one presenting a negligible risk and five presenting a severe risk.

Hazards to consider include:

Write down all possible risks to event safety and who could be affected — attendees, crew, members of the public, or the venue itself — and how you will mitigate and manage each risk. Place extra focus on your most severe risks and prioritize them to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.

Collaborate with your team for the risk assessment; they may notice things that aren’t obvious to you. It’s also helpful to work closely with your suppliers on safety management for events. Asking to see risk assessments and method statements from caterers, marquee providers, and AV companies can help you mitigate risk together. Where appropriate, involve local authorities and emergency services.

Create an emergency event plan

Event planning

It’s essential to plan for situations requiring urgent action, from a fire to a stage collapsing or terrorist incident. Even bad weather can create an emergency.

To feel prepared, develop emergency procedures to be followed by anyone working on the event and discuss your plans with the venue management. For larger events and/or those not in a fixed venue, include police, fire and rescue service, and the ambulance service in your consultation.

Aspects to consider when developing procedures include:

Think about setting up a meeting with your appointed team members to work through a range of scenarios and establish the effectiveness of your responses. Get them to find answers to real-life issues, such as how to manage overcrowding, and then discuss why we use barriers.

Implementing health and safety requirements for an event

Implementing health and safety measures will help you manage staff, suppliers, and attendees and ensure they aren’t exposed to risk, from set-up to breakdown.

To keep everyone on the same page, provide staff with relevant information during the site induction and ensure suppliers do the same for their employees. Include information such as site hazards, speed limits and parking, first aid, toilets and handwashing facilities, and emergency arrangements. Provide relevant health and safety information to the public through signage and/or a pre-event announcement.

To monitor risks throughout your event, create a checklist and have a nominated individual responsible for checking at regular intervals. A clear and competently implemented paper trail is the best way for event organizers to mitigate risk.

Crowd safety at events

A crowd of people at a concert

Live events come in all shapes and sizes, from intimate get-togethers to festivals, conferences, concerts or attractions. While any event presents health and safety challenges, the scale of your event directly influences potential risks. The bigger the crowd, the higher the impact on crowd safety.

One potentially dangerous threat at a big event is a crowd surge. Crowd surges work like a wave; the danger is that people get swept along beyond their control. Once a surge starts, it can be hard to stop. Be vigilant and know how to prevent crowd crush by taking the correct precautions — managing crowd build-up or halting the event if necessary.

How to prevent crowd surge

Preventing crowds from surging forward involves careful planning and thorough risk assessment. People move when things change. That could be a headline act coming on, a gig starting, or even a sudden change in weather. Whatever the reason, the crowd suddenly reacts, and the more people there are, the greater the effect will be.

Steps to take in preventing crowd surges include:

Ensuring your staff are on board and know what trigger points to look out for helps keep everyone safe.

Resources for creating safe events

The event safety tips above aren’t exhaustive, but they’ll help kickstart your health and safety planning. Remember: it’s vital to stay up to date and comply with the latest government guidance before hosting any live event.

Identifying and understanding how to implement health and safety measures is vital to event planning. As a responsible event creator, you must find solutions to potential hazards. Our templates and platform help you pinpoint and manage various risks — meaning staff and attendees stay safe as they enjoy your event.