We are delighted to announce that for 2020 we are partnering with event health and safety specialists Harrier, an award winning and growing Midlands business who offer event safety; small business health and safety and health; and safety training for both employees and individual business requirements.

Harrier will be supporting us with our initial and ongoing planning in preparation of delivering a safe and welcoming environment for our customers, partners and stakeholders at the Ginger and Spice Festival 2020.

We caught up with Harrier to find out a little bit about them and why health and safety is important to the smooth running of festivals and events.

You offer support for small businesses but also for multi-national stadium tours. Can you tell us a little bit about Harrier, and in particular, your expertise in event and festival health and safety?

Harrier was founded in 2010 by Andy Smith, our Managing Director, who set up the company with an idea to ensure that safety support was easy to understand and implement into any size of event and regardless of their budget.

Our core team is made up of former Event Managers who have an operational background to apply safety in a practical way to your event.  We have been lucky enough to work on a variety of events from the Verve Wellness Festival to BTS at Wembley Stadium and now Ginger and Spice Festival 2020!

Our key value is ‘Putting People First’ and we work with our client to primarily ensure that nobody is injured or suffers ill health due to work or attending an event.

 Why is health and safety so important to the smooth running and success of festivals events, big or small?

People attend events to have fun, they do not expect to go home injured and therefore it is essential that safety is given top priority when planning events.  If safety is considered from the beginning of the planning process it fits in seamlessly with customer service and operational requirements; of course if you are trying to shoe horn safety in as a last minute consideration it is going to be time consuming, frustrating and possibly very costly.  Good safety planning can actually help reduce costs, improve customer experience and give your event a good reputation.

 We work with over 80 business and organisations during the Ginger and Spice Festival. Do you have any top tips for small businesses when reviewing their health and safety planning and procedures?

If you have a team, involve them in your review processes.  There is little point in having policies and procedures that do not reflect the reality within your business.  Your team will be able to help with any review and by including them they will be invested in implementing safety systems for you.

 You offer a range of packages and products, can you tell us which are relevant for the event and festival industry stakeholders?

We offer support with creating documentation for your event safety policies and procedures, working with you to ensure that they will all work operationally.  If event organisers would like to have someone on site supporting them with safety we can be there for them too, it is often handy to have an extra pair of eyes and hands to keep on top of things!

For suppliers working on events such as caterers, photographers etc, we have series of packages designed to help make risk assessments easier.  People often get the impression that they do not have to complete risk assessments if they have less than five employees; the law only states that you do not have to write it down, you are still expected to complete the assessments.  Event organisers will often ask for risk assessments before you are allowed on site and therefore having something clearly thought out and written down can make smaller business stand out from the crowd.

 You also offer online training courses, who are they relevant for and are they accessible online?

Our online training is perfect for small businesses that do not have the time or money to send employees on training during the working day.  We cover a variety of subjects including food hygiene, manual handling and fire safety.

It is important to remember that all businesses are required to provide training for staff.  Training can help reduce injuries and ill health and in the event of an accident proof of training can help protect you from insurance claims.

 Lastly, we love to talk about food and in particular spice. Here is our version of desert Island disc: which spice, cook book and cooking utensil would you take with you to your desert island?

This is a hard one, there is so much to choose from…..

Spice – Turmeric

Cook book – Mowgli Street Food

Cooking utensil – My trusty spatula that was brought in Azerbaijan and had to be brought back with me as it was so versatile!