When the law doesn’t say that you are not allowed to lift more than 25kg, but it does say that if you need to you must assess the risk first
What happened?
The HSE visited the brewery and identified that workers were filling hoppers with malt and barley in an unsafe manner. Employees were lifting 25kg sacks in awkward circumstances and the HSE issued an Improvement Notice, requiring the company to carry out a risk assessment of the manual-handling risks and to take appropriate action.
The HSE revisited the site six and nine months later and found that on both occasions, significant improvements hadn’t been made.
Legal Outcome
Not known whether any further action was taken.
What can we learn from what happened?
A limited amount of information here, but a good opportunity to talk about the myths surrounding the 25kg ‘rule’, and always a good to have a brewery case study as well.
So often, I hear learners on training courses say that it is illegal to lift loads above 25kg. Sometimes they have been taught this by safety trainers, sometimes by managers, sometimes it is just heresay. It is, of course not correct.
We don’t have the available word count here to go into too much detail, but what the Manual Handling Regs say is that when lifting loads of 25kg or more, at waist height and with no complications or contributing risk factors, then employers must carry out and document a risk assessment. This means the risk must be assessed and control measures implemented as necessary.
This is when there are no contributing factors that would increase the risk, which means that loads weighing less than 25kg may need to be assessed the manual handling involves
The control measure, as decided, may be that the load must not be lifted manually and, for example, mechanical aids must be used, but this is not necessarily the case. And generally speaking, the heavier the load, the more complicated the manual handling technique (eg involving twisting, reaching, bending etc), and the more environmental risk factors there are (eg available space, floor condition, steps, distance travelled etc), the greater the need for additional control measures. But the law does not say that employees are not allowed to lift loads above 25kg. The law says the risks must be assessed, and this is what the HSE required the brewery to do (although they didn’t!).
Source of Information
SHP In-Court