PPE Health and Safety Regulations

If you?re an employer and your staff are engaged in any work activities that may represent any level of danger to their health or safety, you?re required, under UK law, to provide adequate PPE. PPE stands for Personal Protective Equipment and is given to members of your workforce in order to protect them from potential harm where other measures are not able to negate these possible risks.

Any responsible business will want to limit any threat to their employees as a matter of course, but as a legal requirement, non-compliance can have quite serious consequences. You never want to think about a serious accident in your workplace, but a healthy touch of realism is vital, because if you don?t keep your staff safe, you could be to blame for someone?s injury, a hospital visit ? or perhaps even worse.

What is personal protective equipment?

PPE can include a wide range of items, including high visibility clothing, tough workwear items such as steel toe capped boots, or accessories such as hard hats. In essence, it?s any item that will help to counteract any potentially harmful effect that equipment, material or processes can pose, where these things are integral to a job role and therefore cannot be avoided in entirety. Say for example that you?re a building company and you employ people to work on building sites and construction projects; this is a job full of hazards, from the possibility of large or weighty items falling from height, to busy site traffic and the operating of heavy machinery. After conducting a risk assessment, you would then need provide the necessary tough workwear and PPE items that have been identified as being required to protect your workers. In this example, you?d probably be looking at supplying high visibility jackets or vests, safety hats and footwear, gloves and perhaps even waterproof clothing.

Other requirements under the regulations

The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations mean that not only do you have to supply thee items, but you are responsible for their suitability too. You should ensure that the products supplied are fit for purpose and are maintained and stored correctly; regular checks should be conducted to make sure that items are still offering the protection that they were bought to provide.

You also have a responsibility to make sure that your staff are given clear instructions on how to use their PPE properly and you should make sure that they?re using the equipment as required. It?s also worth noting that you?re not allowed to charge employees for personal protective equipment, as it?s a legal requirement for you to give them the correct items to keep them safe at work and not a privilege.

Every employer has to be up-to-date with the health and safety laws that affect their industry, so make sure that you?re supplying the right safety equipment for your workers to avoid any issues down the line.

Find out more about PPE and tough workwear

Source: http://toddsblogs.com/referenceandeducation/2012/08/02/ppe-health-and-safety-regulations/

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