In my opinion, UCATT (Union of Construction, Allied Trades And Technicians) have got it wrong when they claim that Construction workers could be left without hard hats on sites, following the scrapping of "life-saving laws". They state that the construction (Head Protection) Regulations 1989 had seen the average number of construction workers dying as a result of a head injury fall from 48 to 14 in a year. I don't dispute these figures, but I do dispute the implication that we will go back to the bad old days.
All that is happening with the change is the removal of the duplication of regulations. We now have the more comprehensive Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992.
Repealing the Construction (Head Protection) Regulations doesn't mean that head protection is no longer necessary or that employers can avoid it, just that it is covered by the PPE Regs.
See the article mentioning the UCATT concerns: http://tinyurl.com/bqbc4hu
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