A total of 38 health and safety accidents happened across Trafford ’s schools in 2021, including someone being hit by a moving vehicle.
Trafford council’s latest corporate health and safety report listed 63 accidents across all council-corporate settings, 38 of which were in its schools and marking an increase in the number of incidents compared to 2020.
Most of those 38 school accidents involved physical assaults in school settings, with 23 incidents falling into that category.
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Other incidents involved verbal assaults, slips, trips and falls, injuries sustained while lifting or carrying, someone being hit by a moving, flying or falling object, being cut by a sharp object or a fall from steps/down stairs.
One incident in Trafford’s school settings involved someone being hit by a moving vehicle.
Other areas that saw incidents in 2021 included Trafford’s children’s services — which saw physical assaults, verbal assaults, a road traffic collision and slips, trips and falls.
The council’s adult services also saw one incident of verbal assault, one road traffic collision and one person being cut by a sharp object.
The health and safety report said: “Comparing the accident statistics to the same period in 2020, the increase in accidents mainly relates to schools (in particular special schools) with an increase of 38 incidents reported compared to 5 in the previous reporting term when schools were operating at significantly reduced capacity under lockdown arrangements.
“Services that include support to schools have also seen an increase in incidents reported including Trafford Transport Provision (9 incidents from 1) and catering and cleaning services (8 from 3).
“Violence and aggression accounted for the majority of incidents. Physical assault includes a wide range of physical incidents stemming from aggressive behaviour and accounted for 28 incidents. These occurred mainly within Special Schools and Trafford Transport Provision when dealing with challenging behaviour. This was comparable with pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
“One significant incident occurred within the housing options team and involved a highly volatile service user within Sale Waterside. The incident was reviewed to improve physical and procedural security measures within the building.”
There were just 20 incidents reported across Trafford during 2020 – largely due to the pandemic lockdown measures.
The report added: “Accident statistics can provide an important aspect of monitoring health and safety performance and help identify areas where risk needs to be managed more effectively.
“The Covid pandemic had a significant impact on our workforce delivery due to a number of factors including an increased number of staff working from home, temporary pauses or changes in the provision of some front line services, reduction in customers accessing our buildings and schools only open for key workers at periods of lockdown. This resulted in a substantial decrease in reported incidents.”
