Hinonga hauora me haumaru

As an event organiser you are responsible for planning and managing risk at your event by taking all reasonably practicable steps to deliver a healthy and safe environment, and therefore enjoyable event experience. 

You have a legal responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) to ensure the health and safety of all event participants, spectators, event staff, contractors, subcontractors, volunteers and other event delivery participants such as sponsors, and any persons legally entitled to be at or in the vicinity of the event site. 

To get approval to hold your event on Council-owned public open space, your documentation needs to demonstrate you have considered health and safety as part of your event planning. To assist you with writing your plan, council has developed an event health and safety guidelines and optional tools to use as below:

Event health and safety guidelines

This guide is to help you understand Council’s expectations of event organisers, and to support you in developing an event operations plan that documents how you plan to deliver a healthy and safe event environment.

Event health and safety guidelines (466kb pdf)

Risk control plan – low impact events

This template is tailored towards low risk events on Council-owned public open space, to help you identify risks and how you will manage them. 

Risk control plan (41kb doc)

Event operations plan template and appendices – high impact events

This template can be used to document your health and safety planning by integrating health and safety throughout your event plan. It’s intended that this sits alongside your other event plans such as marketing etc.

Event operations plan template (124kb doc) Event operations plan appendices (86kb doc)

Your Council event facilitator will assist you with which template (or a version of) might be more suitable for your event, depending on its level of impact. You are welcome to create your own plan, however Council will require to be satisfied that all risks associated with your event are considered and managed. All elements outlined in the event safety guidelines relevant to your event will need to be covered in your plan to obtain approval for your event to take place.

Other useful references:

• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015
• The Green Guide – Guide to safety at sportsgrounds
• The Purple Guide – Health, safety and welfare at music events and others
• Protecting our crowded places from attack
• Managing crowds safely
• Advice for managing major events safely
• Crowd control at venues and events
• Sport NZ – Risk management for events
• Safe and Healthy Crowded Places Handbook
• Worksafe NZ – PCBUs working together (921kb pdf)