Posted By CFT Crim indg214 details construction as a high risk activity and provides guidance for numbers of trained personnel etc. CFT

Posted By Dave Merchant To clarify your original question, no there is not a specific legislative clause that says all sites must have "a first-aider". They need first aid "provision", which means supply of whatever equipment and trained persons is suggested by your risk assessment. The text of the 1981 regs says 3(1) "an employer shall provide...such equipment and facilities as are adequate and appropriate in the circumstances for enabling first aid to be rendered..." 4(2) "...shall provide... such number of suitable persons as is adequate and appropriate in the circumstances for rendering first-aid..." Both therefore depend on an RA, but of course if an employee suffers injury and "adequate" first aid wasn't capable of being provided you'll have a case against you. The definition of "adequate" has changed over the years as medical techniques and equipment have improved, for example in 1981 nobody would have considered a defibrillator necessary even for a major venue, but now they're appearing on most high streets. Adequate also means the nature of the work changes the deliverables, as the previous poster has listed. They have to be foreseeable (you don't provide first aid to deal with a meteor impact), but things like chemical splashes, welding burns etc., certainly would be. In the ACOP they give an *example* of 1 appointed person for 'construction' where there are 1-5 people on site, 1 first-aider for sites with 5-50 people, etc.. but these are just that; examples. A lot of the job-specific British Standards ask for more (BS8437 for users of fall protection PPE asks for first aid trained people and equipment on every workplace irrespective of head counts) so ultimately it's a question of how low you go before you're accused of not following "general good practice".

Posted By Richard Webber And dont forget that the duty to provide First Aid cover is on the "Employer" - and that includes all the contractors on site. Of course the Principal Contractor must ensure that sufficient cover exists on site, but the basic cover supplied by the PC is augmented by the contractors First Aiders.