Making the person fit the PPE is not the answer.

If your terms of engagement require clean shaven then basically do not employ subbies who will not comply.

If your terms do not then you cannot force persons who at the end of the day are not your direct employees comply with an unreasonable requirement.

Are you also going to provide shaving equipment, skin care products and PAID time for those individuals who have a 5 O'Clock shadow the moment they shave? It is the only way your issued equipment would be satisfactory in use.

Or you could consider getting suitable equipment where facial hair is not an issue e.g. powered hoods

Face fit testing and clean shaven policies are the hottest potato in H&S. Nobody wants to deal with it as it is a nightmare to enforce. For me, I provided our guys with the info on why the respirators won't make a seal with a beard and what that could mean for their health in the future...but there were still some employees who point blank refused.

It is easy to say provide air fed hoods to avoid the issue - but for our scenario this wasn't reasonably practicable. Our guys had to use a Stihl saw for around 20 minutes a week - was around £600 per employee reasonably practicable for so little use? No, so we provided half-face respirators which cost £30 each. We provided all the information we could to our employees and even had to remind the employees of their Section 7 HASAWA duty. Those who refused to be clean-shaven signed an opt-out form. We then excluded them from the dust-generating tasks which in our case helped change the guys' attitudes and brought them round. The others simply took the huff and left the company; we then added the clean shaven requirement into new employees' contracts. 

It is honestly a nightmare! It can be done but it is hard!

Edited by user 13 June 2022 21:55:04(UTC)  | Reason: typo

Originally Posted by: Sgallacher27

was around £600 per employee reasonably practicable for so little use?

In the grand scheme of things, talking about an employees future health the answer is always yes.

In your scenarion with limited use is the Stihl saw itself the problem aagainst which better engineering controls could have been derived?

At the end of the day it is the court that determines reasonable, suitable, sufficient.

Don't Stihl saws for block cutting have a hose connection for water suppression,  ??

The ones we have onsite do, as do many, (Most), such tools now where dust is created for stone/block/wood and tile cutting.

And as quoted above, operator masks don't protect the public and others in the area

as a 'by the by',  we have recently purchased Axminster battery powered Air Fed hoods, at around £240 each, which is still £240, but we issue it to the users personally, as part of their kit, which then becomes a reasonable cost, vs them keep coming back for £25 P3 half masks plus filters every time, instead of cleaning and maintaing them and just throwing them away

Originally Posted by: Sgallacher27

are we now to ignore everything we get taught about reasonably practicable?

The H&S Sentencing guidelines were updated a few years back altering the perception of what is "reasonably practicable" where spurious defences of cost had been used - hence my comment a court would decide.

Then there is the difference in reasonably practicable between "in so far as" versus the consideration under COSHH of "as low as" - the former has a cost consideration, the latter has technological limit.

Some will recognise this as the difference between BATNICC (Best Available Technology Not Incurring Considerable Cost) and BAT (Best Available Technology).

Of course there are business who choose to follow CATNAP (Cheapest Available Technology Narrowly Avoidning Prosecution) - not really a good idea to copy what others are doing.

As others have commented many of these companies fail to apply available dust supression controls (water or vaccuum) that would save the employees and public being shrouded in plumes of dust, and company RPE cost.

Meantime the construction industry wonders why the HSE keeps turning up on dust purges.

Many thanks for all your reply's

Much appreciated.