Posted By Dave Merchant are you covered by legislation [the Construction (head protection) Regs] or is it just a company policy? If the latter you have the leeway to risk-assess the situation a little more flexibly, but the bottom line will always be that if the person is medically 'unfit' for the workplace or the tasks within it, that's a perfectly valid reason to take action. I think it's useful to relate to the religious exemptions on head protection permitted by most employers - while this is of course not the same problem, it shows that there can be room for movement if an alternative safety system can be found. Too often people will say "wear a hat" when they should be saying "stop dropping bricks".

Posted By Barry Cooper Martin My company have several overhead cranes, but we do not wear hard hats. Firstly it is prohibited to walk underneath a suspended load, secondly we have strict rules that state that all materials, equipment etc, must not be left on an overhead crane. When working on the crane it is cordoned off. In eleven years we have had only one incident, where the door of an electrical cabinet fell from the crane; it did not strike anyone, and was caused by carelessness of an engineer. Yes it could have struck someone below, but I do not think a hard hat would have prevented injury. I still believe the wearing of head protection is not required, if all controls measures are implemented. Light fittings could also fall, but do all companies enforce wearing of head protection? I don't think so. Barry