UK PPE legislation outdated?
Is current personal PPE legistlation outdated?
Employing anyone in the UK is getting more and more onerous as the UK goverment guided by europe introduce more and more red tape for employers. Will this be reviewed if the UK does cut the strings introduced by european union?
Currently employers are supposed to provide all PPE as outlined in this HSE guide : HSE PPE guidance
I'm not stupid I know PPE is required as a last line defence against incidents and I wouldn't advocate anyone to work with chainsaws without it but surely an employee could be asked to supply their own at least for the trial probationary period, after all you cannot do your training without PPE so most staff will have already bought some.
Now I can understand this legislation working fine on a building site as you are only talking about £10 for an EN397 helmet and not much more for a pair of steel toe capped boots but in the arboricultural industry PPE can run to hundreds of pounds especially when an employee demands designer labels. A change to legislation requiring specialist staff to provide their own PPE for a set probationary period would surely be fairer on the employer?