HIGHWAYS ENGLAND TO ADOPT NEW
SAFETY HELMET COLOUR STANDARD
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s part of Highways England’s ‘Raising the bar’ health
and safety initiative, from January 2017, all staff
working on motorways and A-roads will be required
to wear hard hats coloured in correlation to their job
position.
‘Raising the bar’ provides guidance on the current best
practice and minimum requirements for health and safety
on major projects within Highways England. Highways
England and its supply chain partners are required to
review their procedures against these new documents, and
then consider and implement standards on site within six
months of the document version date.
a common safety helmet colour standard; to realise the
following benefits:
• A single standard that can be adopted by all Highways
England construction and maintenance contractors.
At present, contractors specify different requirements on
helmets as there is no industry agreed standard
• More clearly identifying peoples’ roles through helmet
colour, which indicates the level of responsibility on site.
It fosters pride in the wearing of a specific hat colour as a
badge of responsibility
• Reduced costs as companies will no longer have to buy
different coloured helmets for different jobs
The new colour standard, initially introduced by BuildUK
earlier this year, will be helpful for the co-ordination and
communication needed to reduce risks for those working
on the roads.
Highways England construction and maintenance sites
that adopt a helmet colour code for specific roles are to use
the following colours from 1 January 2017:
• Supervisors will wear black helmets
• Slingers and Signallers will wear orange helmets
• Site Manages, Competent Operatives and Vehicle
Marshals will wear white helmets
• Those who do not fall into these categories,
such as site visitors, will wear blue helmets
Reflective markings and role specific helmet labels are
also permitted:
• First Aider: Green first aider sticker
• Fire Marshal: Red fire marshal sticker
Visual identification will be particularly helpful in
workplaces with a multicultural society, or where workers
might have literacy issues.
The new colour standard ends the reign of green and
yellow hard hats on UK roads. The objective is to achieve
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In addition:
Coloured high visibility vests are permitted to
identify other roles e.g. vehicle marshals
Helmets must meet BS EN 397
Network Rails PPE standard allows only white
and blue helmets.
As is general current practice, and where a colour
standard may be impractical, Highways England is advising
the use of a default white helmet colour; on small sites for
example.
For assistance or further information on Highways England, please call 0300
123 5000 or visit www.gov.uk/government/organisations/highways-england
HSE INTERNATIONAL
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