Health and safety compliance manager

Salary: £40,000 - £42,000 dependent on experience

Department/Team: Theatre Operations

Responsible to: Head of Building Operations

Contract: Fixed Term – 12 months, March 2025 (or sooner) – March 2026

Location: Flexible mix of home working and from The Old Vic, 103 The Cut, London, SE1 8NB

Hours: Full-Time (Usual working hours are Monday–Friday, 10am–6pm with some occasional out of hours work - e.g. evenings and weekends - as required).

The Old Vic offers the ability to work these flexibly under the guidelines in our Ways of Working policy. Additional hours may be necessary in order to fulfil the requirements of the post

Lead health, safety, and compliance efforts in one of London's most iconic cultural spaces.

The purpose of this fixed term role is to provide health, safety and compliance support for the Old Vic Theatre Operations team during the mobilisation, opening, and initial period of operation of The Old Vic Backstage during 2025. In addition to providing ‘back-fill’ support for team members focusing on that project, this role will assist with identifying and documenting new safe ways of working, processes and policies associated with opening a new six-floor public space.

The Health & Safety Compliance Manager works within the Theatre Operations Team. In their role they will have day-to-day oversight for all health, safety and compliance matters - including providing H&S support to colleagues across the Theatre, ensuring that we have good contractor management processes and good record keeping in place. They will ensure there is a holistic approach to Health, Safety and Compliance across the Old Vic.
 

Areas of responsibility

H&S and compliance knowledge, skills, training and monitoring

• Staying up-to-date and circulating relevant legislation and codes of practice.
• Supporting the Head of Building Operations to ensure that Old Vic H&S and compliance policies are up-to-date, suitable, sufficient and reviewed regularly.
• Identifying and developing relevant training across The Old Vic, and ensuring that training is suitable, high quality and good value.
• In collaboration with the Head of Building Operations, maintaining an overview of the training regime and record keeping for essential life, safety and security critical systems, from a H&S & Compliance perspective.
• Carrying out health and safety workplace inspections and audits within all areas of the organisation and prioritising action to be taken to resolve any outstanding issues.
• Working with the Head of Building Operations and The Old Vic’s external advisors to run regular Health and Safety Audits and Fire Risk Assessments of all sites, ensuring that any key changes are reviewed and re-assessed between audits.
• As appropriate; sharing, advocating and liaising with external H&S bodies.

Culture and risk management

• Developing and promoting a positive culture across the organisation in relation to Health and Safety.
• Seeking to apply a consistent but flexible approach to health, safety, and fire across all areas of the business whilst remaining mindful of the creative process. Carrying out training as required, including new starter H&S inductions, Fire Marshal and evac chair training.
• Developing strong relationships and influencing behaviours across all areas of The Old Vic to facilitate the promotion of health and safety awareness and drive best practice.
• Reducing harm by promotion of a positive and pro-active health, safety and compliance culture within the Old Vic - and ensuring that everyone working at The Old Vic is aware of and understand their H&S responsibilities.
• Identifying and reviewing key risks to inform overall H&S and related work planning.
• Support the Operations Director and Head of Building Operations to maintain The Old Vic’s H&S Risk Register.

Data and reporting

• Ensuring thorough and appropriate safety records are maintained and anything of concern is promptly reported to the Head of Building Operations.
• Leading on the H&S management of Blue Lemon [The Old Vic’s H&S & Learning Management System management system], including ensuring accuracy of data and facilitating training across the organisation.
• Analysing H&S data and recommending actions or improvements where necessary.
• Organising and preparing reports for meetings as required; such as the H&S Committee, internal management and Board meetings.

Incidents, strategic emergency response team (SERT) and business continuity planning

• Investigating and documenting accidents, incidents and dangerous occurrences and providing meaningful statistics and advice to management.
• Acting as a specialist responder for incidents, emergency responses.
• Contributing to Old Vic business continuity planning.

Licencing

• Assisting with The Old Vic Backstage premises licence application process, including coordinating and attending meetings with the Licencing Authority as required.
• Supporting with Minor Licence Variation applications for the theatre.
• Ensuring that health, safety and compliance processes support licence conditions.
• Assisting in the dissemination of awareness about licence conditions.

Health & safety management support

• Providing support to the Head of Building Operations in the management of health, safety, and compliance across The Old Vic.
• Ensuring that H&S policies, practices, and procedures are adhered to (and documented) across all areas.
• Undertaking Old Vic wide projects as appropriate to enhance our systems and procedures e.g. accident report systems, risk assessment software etc.
• Supporting teams in writing up and reviewing risk assessments, prioritising remedial actions and monitoring their implementation to minimise risk to employees, visitors and assets.
• Alongside the Head of Building Operations, provide advice, guidance, and assistance to all managers in the implementation of policies and systems in order to ensure the achievement of required standards and working practices.
• Where possible introduce initiatives that will enhance health and safety standards and awareness.
• Attending the Health & Safety Committee meetings.
• Coordinating and minuting the Health & Safety Steering Group meetings.
• Ensuring that minutes and actions arising from Health & Safety Steering Group meetings are circulated to members and risks escalated to the Head of Building Operations or Operations Director as required.
• In the Head of Building Operations’ absence, attending Technical H&S Meetings.

Compliance: life safety, contractor management, permits to work, responsible person etc

• Working with colleagues across the organisation to ensure that all life safety systems are maintained and inspected regularly in line with relevant guidance to minimise the risk of any business interruption and ensuring any changes in legislation are met.
• Having ownership of the onboarding and record-keeping process for contractors, ensuring that these are kept up to date and that all staff are aware of their responsibilities when engaging contractors to work on site.
• Alongside colleagues in the Technical department, managing the Theatre’s Permit to Work procedures.
• Managing H&S related compliance and ensuring that all relevant licencing and certification is valid and up to date.
• Ensuring that asbestos is assessed, managed and reviewed regularly, that key personnel receive the relevant training, and that the Asbestos Register is shared with staff and contractors in advance of any work in relevant areas.
• Acting as a Deputy Responsible Person in relation to Legionella Management, ensuring that we are adhering to our Water Management Plan.
• Ensuring that all contractors have submitted the relevant and requisite documentation prior to the commencement of works (RAMS, insurance, etc) and that any necessary Permits to Work are in place.

Building security

• Supporting the Head of Building Operations in the management of The Old Vic’s technical security systems, including providing CCTV footage to Police or other authorities as required.
• Ensuring that ways of working, policies and processes prioritise the safety and security everyone in the building.
• Working with the Operations Administration Coordinator to ensure that there are good records for all keys, alarm fobs and security passes issued to staff – and overseeing the upkeep of the Key Safe Log.

Capital building projects and capital expenditure

• Support the Head of Building Operations and the Operations Director, with the planning, development and implementation of all fire, safety, security and compliance elements of capital building and capital expenditure projects, ensuring that changes made during works do not compromise the plans and interfaces with the current building and strategies.
• Inputting into site-wide strategies for fire, safety, security, and compliance - liaising with relevant contractors and consultants to review cause and effect and establish a hierarchy of control between the relevant strategies.
• Assisting the Head of Building Operations with operational planning in relation to health, safety and compliance - in preparation for completion of capital building projects, and in relation to all requirements for Old Vic Backstage in particular.

This is not an exhaustive list of duties and the Theatre's management may, at any time, allocate other tasks which are of a similar nature or level.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential

• Hold an IOSH (or Tech IOSH) qualification.
• Demonstrable experience in a similar role with strong awareness of health and safety procedures and practices and a strong understanding of compliance.
• Experience of dealing with internal and external stakeholders at all levels including senior leaders, colleagues, and contractors.
• Ability to build relationships and communicate with a diverse range of people in a professional manner.
• A flexible attitude with the ability to adapt accordingly to the role.
• Demonstrable ability to use initiative to provide options and solutions for a fast-paced, time bound, changing, often reactive, service.
• Action oriented, with the ability to take the initiative and deliver results.
• Sensitivity in dealing with confidential information.
• Excellent IT skills.

We actively support and encourage people from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and skill sets to join us and help shape what we do. We are particularly keen to receive applications from people of the global majority, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse and disabled candidates.

The employer reserves the right to close the listing and stop accepting applications sooner than the original deadline. Therefore we strongly recommend applying at the earliest opportunity.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.