module 2 content

Objectives:

  • What working at height is?
  • Key legislation
  • Key responsibilities of employers
  • Key responsibilities of employees
  • Risk Assessment

What working at height is?  

  • Working at height is defined in UK legislation as:
  • Work in any place where, if there were no precautions in place, a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury.

Many tasks that involve working at height present a risk, these tasks include:

  • Window cleaning
  • Shelf stacking
  • Roof work
  • Unloading a vehicle
  • Machine maintenance
  • Putting up displays
  • Gutter cleaning

Key Legislation:

  • The health and safety at work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA) is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health and safety in Great Britain.
  • HSWA requires employers, and the self-employed, to assess the risks to employees and any others (contractors, members of the public, customers etc) that could be affected by their undertaking.
  • HSWA also requires them to put control measures in place to protect those people from harm. It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure employees receive suitable and sufficient instruction, information, training and supervision.
  • HSWA allows for the creation of statutory instruments to give further detail on the various aspirations of the act.
  • The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR) is a statutory instrument made under HSWA
  • MHSWR builds upon HSWA by requiring employers, and the self-employed, to carry out risk assessments and put appropriate control measures in place.
  • Where fiver or more people are employed, these risk assessments must be recorded. However, it is considered best practice to record your risk assessments even if you are not required to by law.
  • The provision and use of work equipment regulations 1998 (PUWER), place duties on individuals and companies that own, operate or have control over work equipment.
  • It also places duties on individuals and companies whose employees use work equipment, regardless of whether or not the equipment is owned by them.

Key legislation

The scope of PUWER is therefore very broad and includes a wide range of equipment used by people working at height.

PUWER states that equipment provided for use at work should:

  • Only be used for its intended purpose
  • Be suitable for its intended purpose
  • Only be used by competent people, who have been given adequate information, instruction and training in its use.
  • Be maintained in a safe condition and be inspected regularly
  • Be used in accordance with health and safety control measures

As the name suggests, the lifting operations and lifting equipment regulations, known as LOLER) builds upon PUWER by placing additional duties on those undertaking such operations or using lifting equipment. This includes the carrying of people, as is the case with Mobile Elevated Work Platforms (MEWPs)

LOLER contains requirements that:

  • Lifting operations are planned, supervised and carried out in a safe manner by people who are competent
  • Where equipment is used for lifting people it is marked accordingly, and it should be safe for such a purpose
  • Before lifting equipment is used for the first time, it is thoroughly examined.
  • Lifting equipment used to transport people is thoroughly examined every 6 months.
  • Following a through examination or inspection of any lifting equipment, a report is submitted by the competent person to the employer to take the appropriate action.

LOLER also requires that lifting equipment is:

  • Sufficiently strong, stable and suitable for the proposed use
  • Positioned or installed to prevent the risk of injury
  • Visibly marked with any appropriate information to be taken into account for its safe use.

The main piece of legislation concerning work at height is the work at Height regulations 2005.

The regulations apply to employers and people in control of work at height. (Contractors or Factory owners for example)

More information and guidance about these laws and guidance is available on the HSE website at:

www.hse.gov.uk

In addition to the to legal sources provided, other organisations provide useful guidance, for example:

  • The international powered access federation (IPAF) www.ipaf.org,

Promotes the safe and effective use of powered access equipment

  • The prefabricated access suppliers & Manufacturers association ltd (PASMA) www.pasma.co.uk is a trade association for the mobile access tower industry.

Employers and the self-employed, have a duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees and other people who might be affected by their business.

Employers must do whatever is reasonably practicable to achieve this.

This means:

Making sure that workers and others are protected from anything that may cause harm, effectively controlling any foreseeable risks that could arise in the workplace.

Assessing risks in the workplace and from work activities

Providing information about the risks and the means of controlling them, also providing instruction and training on how to deal with the risks

Consult employees on health and safety issues.

Key responsibilities of employers:

In regards to the working at height regulations, employers must:

  • Carry out risk assessments
  • Use appropriate work equipment
  • Inspect and maintain work equipment
  • Inspect and maintain the place that the work at height is being carried out including access and egress
  • Manage the risks from working on or around fragile surfaces and from falling objects
  • Make sure those working at height are competent to do so
  • Follow the hierarchy of control measures for managing work at height.

The HSWA and MHSWR require employees to:

  • Take reasonable care of their own health and safety and to others that may be affected by what they do, or fail to do.
  • Follow the arrangements that their employer implements
  • Inform their employer of any danger to health and safety posed by work activities.
  • Tell their employer of any short comings in their health and safety arrangements.
  • Co-operate with their employer and co-workers to help everyone meet their legal requirement.

Key responsibilities of employees

In regards to the working at height regulations, employees must:

-report any activity or defect which they know is likely to endanger the safety of themselves or another.

– use the equipment provided to them in accordance to their training.

– not rush their work and work in a calm controlled manner.

– not be afraid to stop work if they feel the actions, they are being asked to perform are unsafe.

Risk Assessment –

All employers have a legal duty to prepare a risk assessment for work at height.

Risk assessments outline the ways in which the task being carried out could result in injury or ill health. They also state the measures that must be put in place to ensure the chance of anything going wrong is eliminated or reduced to an acceptable level.

Employers with 5 or more employees must have a written risk assessment. Those that have fewer than 5 employees will still need to carry out a risk assessment, but there is no legal duty for them to record it (however it is good practice to do so)

Employers have a legal duty to communicate the significant findings of the risk assessment to workers who may be affected

  1. Identify the hazard

The work at height regulations state that the following should be considered when carrying out a risk assessment:

  • The distance and consequences of a potential fall
  • The working conditions and risks to workers
  • The duration and frequency of use of the equipment
  • The need for a swift procedure for evacuation and rescue
  • Whether or not the work equipment being used is appropriate
  1. Identify who may be harmed and how
  2. This will involve looking at each specific hazard and identifying who may be harmed.

These people could include

  • Specific groups of employees
  • Customers
  • Visitors
  • Members of the public

People that will need to be paid special attention include new and expectant mothers’ young workers people with disabilities, part time workers and sub-contractors.

  1. Evaluate the risk and decide on precautions
  2. At this stage of a risk assessment, this question will need to be asked
  3. Is the level of risk generated by the hazard acceptable or does it need to be reduced?
  4. If the level of risk is unacceptable, precautions will need to be decided upon to reduce the risks.
  1. Record the significant findings and implement them.
  2. The significant findings of the risk assessment should be recorded to provide a statement of the hazards in the workplace, the extent of the risks that they present and the actions taken to control those risks.
  3. Organisations that employ less than 5 people are not legally required to record the risk assessment but it is good practice to do so. Plus, some customers specifically require documented risk assessments.
  1. Review and update as necessary.

Risk assessments must be reviewed and amended if there is a reason to suspect it is no longer valid or if there has been a significant change to a work process, environment, personnel, etc.

There may be reason to suspect that the Risk assessment is no longer valid if there has been:

  • An accident
  • A near miss
  • Ill health

A change to legal standards or guidance