Hundreds of assaults on council staff

Front-line council employees in Powys have been subject to over 350 physical and verbal assaults in the last three years, an investigation has found.

Overall, almost half of the 2,619 reported assaults reported in North and Mid Wales took place on staff working at the region’s schools (1,193), leading to calls for more to be done to protect teachers and other educational support workers while performing their day to day duties.

The figures, obtained via freedom of information requests, revealed that the highest number of assaults took place in Gwynedd, where 838 incidents involving violence on council staff were reported between 2015/16 and 2017/18.

A total of 353 assaults were reported in Powys, with many involving local schools.

The General Secretary of teaching union, the NASUWT, has called for more safeguards to protect teaching staff.

Chris Keates said: “No teacher or other worker should go to work with an expectation that they should tolerate violence and abuse. Yet evidence shows that teachers are not receiving the support to tackle these issues.

“Where a pupil is known to exhibit violent and disruptive behaviour, a risk assessment should be undertaken and action taken to support the pupil to address their behaviour and to protect other pupils and staff. Similar measures should be followed if there are concerns about the behaviour of parents or carers.”

She added: “In too many cases no effective assessment is ever undertaken. Even if it is, all too often this is not always shared with all staff or is not passed on to receiving schools if the pupil is moved.

“Employers who fail to disclose safety information leave themselves vulnerable to legal challenge and industrial action, but more importantly they are behaving recklessly with the health and wellbeing of staff and other pupils and this simply cannot be justified.”

Assaults reported in on council staff in north and mid Wales