I believe we have to treat contractors as we would employees but if we're providing PPE for our employee should we pay for the same PPE for 2 contractors doing same job with him at our cost? They are employed via an agency I'm told (not self employed) in our Data Centre. Awaiting details of agency... Please help chums!

Your contract with the agency will tell you. In the past I've reported agencies to HSE where the agency has charged the worker for PPE. And HSE issued INs as a result There is a sentence or so in the PPE regs about agency responsibility for providing PPE.

Hi, DOCKING36832 We employ a large number of people on our construction sites all over the UK (labourers mainly but also forklift drivers and various other tasks) through a number of large national agencies. This initially (many years ago) caused confusion in our company as to whose responsibility it was to provide PPE. Myself and the rest of our H&S dept said it was ours, the cost guys thought otherwise! Eventually the HSE confirmed we were right; that the people employed through an agency were essentially staff (albeit temporary) and therefore it was our job to risk assess, provide PPE, training in exactly the same way as we would with permanent staff. Makes sense when you think about it because all the agency is doing is introducing people looking for work and companies looking for people. They are not the person's employer so have no responsibility in that respect. Would you expect the office people from the agency to jump in their car, drive 500 miles to site and carry out a risk assessment every time one of the labourers is asked to do something different?? Of course not, that's OUR responsibility. WALKER: It is common practice across the construction industry for agencies to provide people with PPE, but only to better their job prospects (we'll only hire guys who have their own boots already - saves a fortune!!) As for the agency charging them for this, i should imagine they do! Again - they're not the employer and the person isn't their employee. I really can't see a problem. You say that the HSE issued improvement notices when you reported this? What details do you have of this? (date, names etc) as i really can't see that any law has been broken and would be very interested to have a look at how enforcement action was able to be taken.

The agency may supply basic "kit" (say standard workwear, maybe even things like boots and hardhats) but this has more to do with employability than H&S. However, they would not supply "proper" task specific PPE as they are not going to be 100% up-to-speed with what the people they are "supplying" will actually be doing. This is the responsibility of the company employing them, not the company providing them. When we consulted the HSE on this very matter, they used the term "Master / servant relationship".