23 September 2024
Who is responsible for providing PPE?
In certain workplaces, PPE is necessary to keep employees safe and protect the business from legal ramifications. Employers are legally responsible for providing free PPE in these work environments, but what’s the procedure for PPE training and for ongoing inspections, maintenance, cleaning, repairs and replacements of this equipment?
In this article, we’ll go through everything you need to know about employers’ and employees’ responsibilities regarding wearer protection, helping your workplace stay compliant with the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) guidance.
what is PPE?
To understand more about PPE provision, you need to know what’s classed as PPE and what it’s for. According to The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, PPE is:
“all equipment (including clothing affording protection against the weather) which is intended to be worn or held by a person at work and which protects the person against one or more risks to that person’s health or safety, and any addition or accessory designed to meet that objective”.
In any work environment where there is an elevated level of risk to workers’ health and safety, it’s likely that PPE will be deemed necessary by HSE, to both reduce the likelihood of incidents and mitigate the severity of incidents if they do occur.
Due to the wide variety of risks present across different industries, PPE can include many different types of clothing and equipment, such as:
- High-visibility workwear
- Hard hats
- Safety goggles
- Gloves
- Chemical-resistant clothing
- Anti-static garments
- Steel-toe boots
- Masks and respirators
- Face shields
When do you need PPE?
To determine whether a workplace poses enough of a risk to employees to make mandatory PPE necessary on-site, the employer should conduct regular risk assessments to evaluate potential health and safety issues. Failure to conduct these risk assessments and provide PPE where required can lead to verbal and written warnings, enforcement notices, and potentially fines or prison sentences (for the most severe cases) following routine HSE inspections.
However, when a workplace risk is identified, PPE shouldn’t be your first port of call. Where possible, it’s better to try to remove the risk or isolate workers from it. The following solutions should be considered in order, with PPE as the last resort:
- Eliminating the hazard
- Replacing the hazard
- Isolating employees from the hazard
- Changing the way people work
- Providing PPE to protect employees
So, if a danger identified in an employer’s risk assessment can’t be removed, replaced, or kept away from employees by changing how people work, this is when PPE needs to be provided.
The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992
When a hazard can’t be effectively managed through other means, the law holds the employer responsible for providing adequate PPE to protect workers against this risk. According to HSE and The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 (PPER 1992):
“Every employer shall ensure that suitable personal protective equipment is provided to his employees who may be exposed to a risk to their health or safety while at work except where and to the extent that such risk has been adequately controlled by other means which are equally or more effective.”
This means that employers cannot require their employees to buy their own PPE. According to UK law, employers must bear the responsibility and cost of:
- Buying PPE
- Inspecting the condition of PPE regularly
- Monitoring its use to ensure PPE compliance
- Maintaining and repairing PPE promptly
- Replacing this protective equipment if needed (e.g., if it’s become too damaged or does not fit the employee properly)
Employers must also ensure that all PPE:
- Fits employees correctly
- Is fit for purpose
- Is UKCA or CE-marked
Employers can only ask employees to obtain their own PPE if they provide them with a budget and reimburse the cost of the PPE. However, in this case, the employer would still be responsible for ensuring that the selected PPE is fit for purpose.
PPE training
In addition to purchasing, monitoring and maintaining PPE, employers need to ensure that their employees have sufficient training on how to use their PPE properly – otherwise, the risk of dangerous accidents could increase. Regular training will also ensure that all workers fully understand the importance of PPE compliance and how to look after this vital equipment, which would hopefully reduce the amount of money that the employer must spend on repairs and maintenance.
The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 2022
These regulations were expanded in 2022. The general guidance remains the same, but PPER has been expanded to include a wider group of workers. This means that employers who previously weren’t responsible for providing PPE may now have to, according to UK law.
PPER 1992 only applied to limb (a) workers, who are workers with a contract of employment (e.g., full-time employees of one company). To expand the law, PPER 2022 also applies to limb (b) workers, who are workers that have a more casual employment relationship. As a general rule, limb (b) workers:
- Have casual or irregular working arrangements
- May work for multiple employers
- Have a limited right to send someone else to do their work
- Only carry out work if they choose to
- Receive holiday pay but not other employment rights after one month of continuous service
For example, limb (b) workers can include temporary workers, agency workers and ‘gig workers’, such as drivers for companies like Deliveroo and Uber. According to PPER 2022, employers of these workers must now provide them with free PPE if a workplace risk assessment deems that this is necessary.
What about self-employed workers?
Since self-employed people don’t have employers, they are responsible for purchasing and maintaining their own PPE if needed. They are also responsible for ensuring that their PPE meets the standards required for the workplace they’re entering, which means that clients can ask them to wear more advanced PPE if their site carries an elevated level of risk.
One exception to this rule is if a self-employed person is working for a single client full-time, as they would then be classed as an employee and entitled to PPE provided free of charge by their employer (if this is necessary for their workplace).
What are the employee’s responsibilities?
As we’ve established, all of the legal responsibility for workplace PPE compliance is placed on the employer. However, it’s very important that employers and employees work together to ensure that proper PPE is provided and worn correctly, as the consequences of PPE non-compliance can be devastating.
Employees have the right to speak up if they feel like they should be provided with PPE in their workplace, or if they do have PPE but it’s ill-fitting, badly maintained or otherwise not fit for purpose. Employees should fully engage in workplace PPE training (which must be provided by the employer) so that they know how to wear their PPE properly, look after it, and identify faults. If an employee identifies problems with their PPE, they should immediately notify their employer, who is then responsible for correcting this issue as soon as possible. In the meantime, while the PPE is not fit for purpose, the employer should find alternative tasks for the employee so that they aren’t exposed to workplace hazards.
Unfortunately, even if comprehensive PPE training is provided and any PPE maintenance issues are promptly addressed, some employees may still not wear their PPE correctly, or they may refuse to wear it entirely. Unless the worker has legitimate reasons to not wear their PPE (e.g., they refuse to wear a hard hat because of their religious headgear), the employer must make sure that the employee wears the correct PPE when on-site. If workplace accidents occur because of PPE non-compliance, the employer would ultimately be legally responsible for not enforcing PPE compliance adequately.
For this reason, it’s in the employer’s best interest to work closely with their employees to provide thorough training and quickly address any issues related to PPE maintenance, repairs or re-sizing – even if the employee requests a non-standard size. All of this is the employer’s responsibility, so to protect themselves legally, companies will typically outline their expectations for PPE compliance in employment contracts – allowing them to dismiss employees that refuse to wear their PPE.
what about other types of workwear?
Your employer cannot charge you for any PPE that you must wear at work. However, things get a bit more complicated when you consider other forms of workwear – particularly if this involves clothing that you could technically wear outside of work.
If you’re required to wear a specialist uniform at work that doesn’t fall under the PPE category, your employer isn’t legally required to pay for it – only PPE must be provided for free. However, you may be entitled to a workwear tax rebate instead.
This rebate only applies to the maintenance, cleaning and replacement of uniforms that are required for your job and can only be worn while at work. For example, healthcare tunics and trousers, police officer uniforms, and other types of emergency response attire are easily recognisable work uniforms that are required on the job and can’t be worn as everyday clothing, which means you’ll be entitled to claim workwear tax relief if you wear these garments.
However, you aren’t entitled to the workwear tax rebate if you need to wear smart business suits or clothing in a certain colour for your job, since these items could be worn outside of work too.
Here at alsico, we design and supply high-quality workwear solutions for a wide range of sectors and purposes, including wearer protection, healthcare, contamination control, general workwear and more. Contact us today for more information about our standard uniform range, or to arrange a consultation about our bespoke uniform design service.
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