As part of a subscription to the Legislation Update Service we offer a free helpline service. This LUS subscriber helpline service helps provide clarity on the general application of environment, health and safety legislation. We get some great questions and thought you might be interested in the answers we gave.
A good general definition of a producer has been provided by Natural Resources Wales as:
“A waste producer is the person, or organisation, whose activity creates the waste. This is regardless of whether they have been instructed by somebody else or not. If a person creates waste as an employee, their employer is the waste producer. If a person creates the waste as a contractor or sub-contractor, they are the waste producer.”
In this situation we would consider the contractor to be the producer of the waste. This is because it is their activities that ultimately produce the waste, which they then remove.
We would advise that you check the agreements you have with the contractors.
There is no legal requirement to create a statement that PPE is provided for free. You may, however, include such a statement within your written Health and Safety Policy.
You need to be able to demonstrate that the PPE is provided for free. This could be done by various methods such as having open stations for PPE access or having those supplied with PPE to sign for it acknowledging it was provided for free.
The relevant legislation for the presence of invasive plants, such as Japanese knotweed, is the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
Section 14 states ‘any person plants or otherwise causes to grow in the wild any plant which is included in Part II of Schedule 9, he shall be guilty of an offence’. Japanese knotweed was added to the list of invasive plants in Schedule 9 back in 2010.
While it is not an offence to have invasive species (such as Japanese Knotweed) on your site, organisations are required to prevent it from spreading to neighbouring properties or the wild.
We recommend that it would be good practice to add a compliance comment to the Act confirming that you are actively managing the knotweed and taking steps to prevent its spread.
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 was passed on 3rd April 2025, requiring those in control of qualifying public premises and events to take steps to reduce the risk of acts of terrorism.
Currently the only Act is only in force for the purpose of making regulations, which will then bring into force requirements for those in control of premises and events.
The Act is not directly in scope as occupational health and safety in the Legislation Update Service, however, as it is still relevant to those in control of qualifying public premises and events we have published an article which details how you can add the legislation to your register manually via the “other requirements” function.
This article provides a full summary and duties section for you to copy and paste into your register.
The H&S legislation places duties on both employers and employees in relation to workplace health and safety.
If, as an employer, you provide health surveillance as necessary for your employees, the employees would be legally required to attend.
Section 7 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places a duty on employees to co-operate with their employer to enable them to comply with statutory obligations (e.g. health surveillance).
In relation to the exposure to hazardous substances, regulation 11(8) of The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 specifically requires employees to attend health surveillance procedures when necessary (during working hours and at the expense of the employer).
Please note that, while the legislation requires employees to attend health surveillance procedures when requested by employer, the official guidance also requires employers to consult workers in relation to the provision of health surveillance.
Restrictions on dress codes, including wearing jewellery, at work isn’t specifically covered by legislation. There have been many decisions made via common law (case law) where employees have argued that employer restrictions on dress codes are discriminatory and outcomes have differed depending on the specific circumstances in each case.
The general consensus is that provided there is a clear and legitimate health and safety reason as to why jewellery must not be worn then it would be lawful to prohibit the wearing of jewellery. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) provides guidance on this here. To apply a rule prohibiting the wearing of (some or all) jewellery in manufacturing areas then the company would need to demonstrate that this is based on a genuine health and safety requirement, such as the effective control measures identified in suitable and sufficient risk assessments, otherwise there is a risk the global standard could be considered as indirectly discriminatory.
