Are you showing all the right signs?

The Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 implement European Council Directive [92/58/EEC] on minimum requirements for the provision of safety signs at work. The guidance is aimed at helping employers meet their responsibilities under these Regulations. The Directive standardises safety signs throughout member states of the European Union so that wherever a particular safety sign is seen it provides the same message.

The intention is that workers, who move from site to site, such as service engineers, will not be faced with different signs at different workplaces. The Directive and these Regulations require employers to provide safety signs where other methods, properly considered, cannot deal satisfactorily with the risks.

They cover traditional safety signs, such as the well-known ‘no smoking sign’ and other means of communicating health and safety information, such as hand signals, acoustic signals (e.g. warning sirens on machines) and verbal communications.