Risk Assessment of Physical Spaces

In an ideal world, all physical spaces would be risk-free environments where nobody would ever come to any harm.

But in reality, every space carries some level of potential danger and whilst we can never completely eliminate risk, we can look for ways to reduce it, so that we can keep our service users, and each other, as safe as possible.

Watch our Talking Behaviour episode about reducing risk.

Reducing risk is everyone’s responsibility

Formal risk assessments are reports that document the potential risks for an individual. They are an honest and transparent process to acknowledge the hazardous nature of foreseeable incidents and specific environments.

Everyone in an organisation shares a responsibility for health and safety, and it is essential that all staff members have a shared understanding of risk, are familiar with the content of their organisation’s risk assessments, and know where to locate any relevant documentation.

With regard to assessing the risk presented by physical spaces, including external community services, we need to consider not only the space itself, but how things in the space could present a hazard. Moreover, we need to give due consideration to individuals interact with the environment and how that might affect the level of risk.

Download our risk assessment matrix guide.

Foreseeable risks and hazards

There are certainly some obvious risks associated with physical spaces – climbing equipment in a children’s playground, unlocked windows in a multi-storey building, cleaning products in a communal kitchen – that are easily identifiable and that would naturally form the basis of our formal risk assessments. These are compiled in advance and should be reviewed on a regular basis to make sure they always reflect current conditions.