HEALTH & SAFETY INFORMATION

Legislation affecting lift truck users and owners:

HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK ACT

The main piece of legislation that affects users and owners of lift trucks is the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. This is the fundamental legislation on which all UK Health and Safety law is based.

APPROVED CODE OF PRACTICE FOR LIFT TRUCK OPERATORS (ACOP)

This Code has been approved by the Health and Safety Commision and gives advise on how to comply with the law. In 1989, the Approved Code of Practice was introduced.

This is the single most important piece of “legislation” affecting the training of lift truck operators that has so far been introduced. This was revised in 1999 for the second edition and the latest, third edition published in 2013.

PROVISION AND USE OF WORK EQUIPMENT REGULATIONS (PUWER)

The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations came into force on December 5th 1998 and affect all work equipment. They updated the previous 1992 regulations and this time have an accompanying set of regulations in the form of the LOLER statutes.

LIFTING OPERATIONS AND LIFTING EQUIPMENT REGULATIONS (LOLER)

The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations expects all companies to plan all lifting operations. In most cases the operations can be carried out as the operator was taught to do during his/her basic training.

CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER AND CORPORATE HOMICIDE ACT 2007

Introduced in April 2008, this legislation aims to penalise companies and company directors in the event of accidents at work resulting in the death of persons. The ramifications of this legislation are far reaching.