Afternoon, I have an issue with the above. There are some people within the organisation who want to have a blanket policy of everyone in our warehouse wearing hard hats. I have resisted this to date as the risk assessment shows there is a very low risk of objects falling from height and I don't want to just throw PPE at people without looking at other options. We have racking, however everything stored on the racking is on a pallet that is tightly wrapped. This ensures we have no loose items that can fall. The warehouse is relatively small and at the moment we have racking checks carried out for damage to racking and to any pallets. We use forklift trucks and pallet trucks to take items off the racking. When this is done, barriers are pulled across the aisle in question so no one can walk in the vicinity. The one option I thought was that perhaps the pallet truck operator should wear a hard hat as the only risk of items falling is when they are being moved. The ride on forklift truck has an overhead cage. I don't see a hard hat as being necessary for everyone as I think we need to control the risk of falling objects rather than prevent injury if they fall. To be honest if a pallet falls from the top and lands on someone a hard hat won't be any use!! Any comments on how to take this forward appreciated.

Hi For what it is worth, I believe the approach you are taking seems reasonable (without seeing it in situ it is hard to be more definitive). What you describe seems to reflect the "storage rules" we see every day in places such as Homebase, B&Q, IKea or other warehouse type retailers - I cannot recall the last time I was asked to wear a hard hat when shopping in these places and I do not know anyone who has suffered injury (there may be some, but I have not heard of anyone I know). So it would seem that there are circumstances where the risk can be managed and others in your organisation will find it difficult not to acknowledge that point. If your standards are better than those utilised by these types of retailers and there are no other significant risks that may lead to items falling on someone's head then your argument would seem strong. Whilst I suspect you will not get a definitive agreement from anyone because of detached nature of the advice, I hope this might help. Stuart

It's a good point re stores with racking. I'm a firm believer in only supplying PPE when there is a real need for it. I think enforcing hard hats would be difficult as the workforce have went so long without them (with no incidents in the 18 months we have operated in the building). Bump caps may be a solution and would be far easier to enforce as I believe they are more comfortable to wear. Samm - have you had any feedback from the people wearing these?

I read an article somwhere on here about safety culture and it changed my opinion on the use of hard hats slightly. I was of the same impression that if something big falls then a hard hat isn't likely to be of any use however taken in the context of a postive workplace safety culture then hard hats signify to everyone else, contractors, visitors, that safety is taken seriously and that shortcuts are not acceptable in the workplace. When you say "the organisation" I assume that your company is bigger than one warehouse and so promoting the use of hard hats throughout the whole organisation may be a senior management approach to promoting this safety culture. Or, am I talking jibberish?! I am new afterall.

Regarding safety culture and mandatory use of PPE despite extremely low risk because it is "positive safety behaviour" , not all PPE lends itself to this aspect and to a large extent removes risk based protection as it is easier for management to implement it. I can understand need for high vis--due to vehicular movement and safety shoes, primarily for slip resistance, but not hard hats, unless the loads can fall off ( i.e. small items on pallets, not shrink wrapped etc.)