Personal Protective Equipment and Work Accidents

Personal Protective Equipment and Work Accidents

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is necessary to protect you in particular against health and safety risks to vulnerable areas of your persons i.e. your head, face, eyes, skin, hands etc.

The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 impose a fairly strict regime for both Employer’s and Employee’s to follow and these are intended to work together to provide you the employee with the most effective protection.

The following PPE Regime (duties) is imposed on your Employer:

• 1. Duty of Assessment
• 2. Duty to provide suitable PPE
• 3. Duty to provide compatible PPE
• 4. Duty to maintain and replace PPE as and when appropriate
• 5. Duty to provide suitable accommodation for PPE i.e. storage facility, hanging space, appropriate boxes etc.
• 6. Duty to provide the necessary training and information in relation to PPE
• 7. Duty to ensure that all PPE is used correctly.

Likewise an Employee, has the following duties to adhere to:

• Duty to ensure you use PPE in accordance with any training or instruction which has been provided.
• Duty to return PPE to the accommodation which has been provided for it.
• Duty to report any defect or loss of PPE to the Employer – they can’t replace/repair it if they don’t know about it!

The regime imposed on you as an Employee is relatively minor in comparison to that of your Employer. If you fail to comply with the procedures in relation to PPE that your Employer has provided training on and you are then injured because you did not comply with the training provided, then you are likely to have your compensation claim significantly reduced or worse still…you might not be able to claim at all!