Employers need to consider the impact extreme summer weather may have on the health of employees. While doing so, the employer must also determine the risk control measures that may be required at such times.
Summer 2022 had seen the UK record its highest ever temperature of 40.3°C, with new national records being set in England, Scotland and Wales.
Although the chances of reaching such high temperatures again in the coming years are said to be extremely low, the Met Office has concluded that the UK will, however, see longer periods with temperatures higher than the seasonal norms.
Although many people may enjoy high summer temperatures, for employers periods of excessive heat can present challenges in terms of meeting their health and safety obligations.
The majority of individuals in the UK will be well acclimatised to the usual summer temperatures. However, with climate change impacts, there is the potential for more periods of hot weather above average summer temperatures.
In these circumstances, individuals are less likely to be able to acclimatise to the higher heat levels leading to “thermal discomfort”.
Thermal discomfort is where people start to feel uncomfortable, ie they are too hot but are not made unwell by the conditions. Most people will not suffer medical symptoms due to the discomfort, beyond irritability and tiredness.
However, extreme heat events can cause significant health issues such as heat exhaustion, heat stroke and other heat stress-related illnesses.
Perhaps less well-recorded, exposure to higher temperatures for longer periods of time can increase the risk of injuries as a result of fatigue, lack of concentration, poor decision making, etc.
Other factors to consider could include increased stress levels, increased pollution levels and even increased exposure to hazardous substances where materials/substances react adversely to extreme temperatures.
It is now well-recognised that other factors will impact any adverse effects of extreme heat. This includes relative humidity, air movement, sun exposure, work demands, clothing and metabolic heat. These factors make up what is known as the “human thermal environment”.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) states that “all workers are entitled to an environment where risks to their health and safety are properly controlled. Heat is classed as a hazard and comes with legal obligations like any other hazard”.
Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR), employers must assess the risks to workers and put control measures in place to protect those workers.
The HSE states that “temperature in the workplace is one of the risks you should assess whether the work is being done indoors or outdoors”.
Risks must be controlled to as low as reasonably practicable, which means finding a balance between the cost of reducing the risk and the benefits that brings.
A question often asked when undertaking a risk assessment is whether there is a maximum temperature in which workers are required to work. As the HSE states, “there’s no law for maximum working temperature, or when it’s too hot to work, because every workplace is different”.
It continues by noting that no meaningful upper limit can be imposed because in many indoor workplaces high temperatures are not seasonal but created by work activity, eg in bakeries or foundries.
The employer must, therefore, determine what a reasonably comfortable temperature should be at the workplace based upon the findings of a risk assessment. There can be many inputs into the risk assessment, including:
The HSE has also produced a useful “heat stress checklist” that may help inform an employer’s decision regarding risk control measures.
There is nothing stating what is meant by “comfortable” as what one person deems reasonably comfortable may not be the same as what is deemed reasonably comfortable by another, and this is where difficulties often lie for employers and employees alike.
It is probably the case that during much of the year, workplace temperatures are within a zone that is deemed to be comfortable for the majority of workers and it is only during exceptional periods of heat that workers begin to suffer from thermal discomfort and/or the health effects of heat exposure.
As such, employers may determine that it is necessary to have additional risk control measures adopted to take account of exceptional seasonally hot weather.
This can be based upon the needs of an individual (taking into account the employer has a duty of care to individual employees) or collectively for a group of workers.
In taking this approach, the employer will require a form of “trigger point” that informs them when additional risk control measures may be required due to hot weather.
One tool that may be used is the UK Health Security Agency’s Heat-Health Alert system. Although primarily aimed at the organisations required to undertake public health action, the system does provide useful information.
From summer 2023, Heat-Health Alerts transitioned to an impact-based alerting, which provides users with information over and above the fact that hot weather is likely to occur. It gives an indication of the impacts likely to be observed as a result of the temperatures. The alerts are given a colour, as shown below.
In conjunction with the above, the Met Office has the National Severe Weather Warning Service, which is a warning service based on the impact of the UK weather rather than a threshold of the weather itself. Warnings are graded as yellow, amber and red, and, among other matters, give the following information:
Utilising the above information, employers may determine that pre-planned additional risk control measures are necessary to ensure that their employee’s health is not adversely impacted by extreme summer weather.
Summer extreme weather can be said to be foreseeable and as such employers need to consider the impacts this may have on the health of employees.
In doing so, a suitable and sufficient risk should be undertaken to take into consideration the impacts of such weather conditions. In doing so, the employer may determine that additional risk control measures may be required at times of extreme hot weather.
In such cases, suitable planning must be put in place to ensure the risk control measures deemed necessary are implemented. This could be through the use of trigger points such as UK weather warning systems.
In general terms, this could include:
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