The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has issued a Safety Notice aimed at organisations with vertical lifting platforms installed at their premises for people with impaired mobility. Whilst this Safety Notice is predominantly aimed at sectors such as health care and transport, it is also worthwhile considering that such lifts also feature in some commercial business premises.
This Safety Notice comes as a result of two incidents where emergency landing door keys were used regularly during normal usage to override safety devices designed to prevent the opening of landing doors when the platform is not at the correct landing. Inappropriate usage of this manner effectively allows the platform to operate in a faulty manner with access being gained to the lift well when the platform is not at the same level. One of the recent incidents resulted in a fatality. This Safety Notice will be of interest to all organisations that have such a platform installed. Procedures should be reviewed accordingly to ensure emergency release mechanisms are not operated on a non-emergency basis.
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Law-Now information is for general purposes and guidance only. The information and opinions expressed in all Law-Now articles are not necessarily comprehensive and do not purport to give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent developments.
The original publication date for this article was 20/06/2012.
