Site safety law, duties and signs

Core idea

Health and safety law assigns duties rather than relying on signs alone. Employers must plan, assess and control work; workers must cooperate, use controls correctly and report defects. Topic-specific rules then address equipment, substances, lifting and reportable events. A sign communicates a control but does not replace removal, guarding, ventilation or training.

What to recognise

• COSHH assessment considers hazardous substances, exposure routes and effective controls.
• PUWER covers suitability, maintenance, guarding and competent use of work equipment.
• LOLER applies to lifting operations and lifting equipment, with planning and examination duties.
• RIDDOR covers defined reportable events; internal incident reporting can be broader.
• Read a safety sign’s colour, shape and symbol together; they tell you whether it prohibits, requires, warns or identifies safety provision.
• The employer’s general duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is to do what is reasonably practicable. Weigh the risk reduction against the time, trouble and cost of a precaution: it can be left out only if that cost is grossly disproportionate to the benefit. Other duties have their own wording: employees must take reasonable care and cooperate, and safety provisions must not be misused.
• HSE is the main enforcing authority for construction health and safety in Great Britain, with powers to inspect, issue notices and prosecute. An improvement notice sets out what is wrong and what must change, and allows at least 21 days to put it right. A prohibition notice stops an activity that risks serious personal injury until it is made safe. Failing to comply with either is a criminal offence.
• A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm; risk is the likelihood of that harm happening and how serious it would be.
• A method statement sets out, step by step, how a task will be carried out safely, drawing on what the risk assessment found.
• A permit to work formally authorises specified high-risk work once its precautions have been confirmed and put in place.
• Safety data sheets and product labels are the source of hazard and control information for a COSHH assessment.
• Under Great Britain’s RIDDOR rules, a work-related accident causing more than 7 consecutive days away from normal duties must be reported within 15 days of the accident. Exclude the accident day when counting incapacity, but include rest days. Specified injuries and dangerous occurrences require notification without delay. Dangerous occurrences are a fixed list of incidents with a high potential to cause death or serious injury, such as lifting equipment collapsing or plant touching an overhead power line; they are reportable even when nobody is hurt. Specified injuries include fractures other than to fingers, thumbs and toes, amputations, serious burns and loss of consciousness caused by a head injury or asphyxia. An accident that keeps a worker off normal duties for more than 3 consecutive days, but not more than 7, is recorded, for example in the accident book, but does not have to be reported.
• RIDDOR also covers diagnosed occupational diseases likely to have been caused or made worse by the work, such as occupational dermatitis from regular exposure to a skin irritant, hand-arm vibration syndrome and occupational asthma: the employer reports the diagnosis. An accident to a member of the public is reportable when it involves work activity, injures them and they are taken directly from the scene to hospital for treatment; HSE says examinations and diagnostic tests, such as X-rays, are not treatment.

CDM 2015 on smaller jobs

When more than one contractor will work on a project, the client must appoint a principal designer and a principal contractor in writing. A householder having work done is a domestic client, and those appointments are their only CDM duty. If they appoint nobody, the principal contractor role falls to the contractor in control of the construction phase, who normally takes on the client duties as well. Every project needs a construction phase plan before work starts on site; the principal contractor writes it, or the contractor where there is only one. A project must be notified to HSE before the construction phase begins if it is scheduled to last more than 30 working days with more than 20 people working at the same time, or to exceed 500 person days. The client gives the notice, and it is displayed in the site office.

Lifting equipment

The safe working load marking tells you the load the equipment can lift in the configuration being used. Its own weight does not give that capacity. Use equipment with adequate strength and stability, check the load against the applicable capacity marking, and keep the required thorough examinations up to date: at least every 6 months for equipment that lifts people and for lifting accessories such as slings, and at least every 12 months for other lifting equipment, unless a competent person's examination scheme sets the intervals. Plan and supervise the lifting operation as well. Defects found at a thorough examination are reported to the person using the equipment, and to anyone it was hired from, and to the enforcing authority: HSE for industrial workplaces, the local authority for most others. Not everything that raises a load is LOLER lifting equipment: HSE gives escalators, many conveyors and simple pallet trucks that only raise a load just clear of the ground as examples outside LOLER's specific rules, though PUWER still applies to them.

Insurance and the law poster

An employer must hold employers' liability insurance with an authorised insurer, for at least £5 million, and display the certificate where employees can easily read it, on paper or electronically. Public liability insurance, which covers claims from the public, is a different policy and generally voluntary. An employer must also either display the health and safety law poster where workers can easily read it or give each worker the equivalent leaflet.

Read the whole sign

• A red circular border and diagonal bar cross out a black symbol on white: the behaviour is prohibited.
• A blue circle with a white symbol requires the action shown, such as using head protection.
• A yellow triangle with a black border and symbol warns of a hazard.
• A green square or rectangle with a white symbol identifies emergency escape or first-aid provision.
• A red square or rectangle with a white symbol identifies firefighting equipment, such as an extinguisher or hose reel.

Red therefore has more than one use. An extinguisher-location sign helps you find equipment; it does not prohibit using it. Read the symbol as well as the colour and shape, and follow the site’s emergency arrangements.

Apply it

For a dusty cutting task, assess the material and exposure, choose a method that limits dust generation, and use appropriate water suppression or extraction. Add suitable RPE where needed, check the equipment and brief the worker. For silica-generating cutting, source controls and RPE work together. A warning sign can inform others but does not control the dust itself.

Limits

Only the responsible person submits a statutory RIDDOR report, while everyone should follow the internal reporting route. An employer reports a reportable work-related injury to its employee; certain self-employed people must report their own incidents. A near miss is not always reportable: check the defined categories, and investigate and put right other incidents anyway.