Health, Safety and Legal Responsibilities
The Health, Safety and Legal Responsibilities domain tests whether you can name the duties on you and your employer, match the correct regulation to a hazard, and explain what "authorised" really means in a lift-truck yard. Questions here are usually short scenarios rather than definitions.
Regulations to match to hazards
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 - section 2 puts the duty on the employer to provide safe plant, safe systems of work, training and supervision; section 7 requires you to take reasonable care and co-operate; section 8 makes it an offence to interfere with anything provided for safety, such as removing a seat switch or a guard.
- PUWER 1998 - work equipment must be suitable for its purpose, maintained, inspected and used only by people who are competent and have received information, instruction and training.
- LOLER 1998 - lifting equipment must be strong and stable, marked with its safe working load, and thoroughly examined at least every 12 months (6 months if used to lift people).
- MHSWR 1999 - risk assessments and competent persons; RIDDOR 2013 - report overturns, load failures and specified injuries; COSHH and DSEAR - battery acid and LPG.
Competence is not the same as a card
The chain is: training, test, familiarisation on the actual truck, then written authorisation by the employer. A training card is evidence of training; it does not authorise you to operate every truck on every site. Refresher training is expected roughly every three years (L117 guidance) and after any incident, near miss, long absence or change of truck or attachment.
Worked example
A supervisor asks you to unload a delivery with a truck fitted with a block clamp, which you have never used. You hold a counterbalance certificate and are authorised on the site's forks-only trucks. The correct answer is to decline the task, explain that you are not authorised on that machine or attachment, and ask for familiarisation and authorisation - the clamp changes both the controls and the rated capacity. Operating it anyway would breach PUWER's competence requirement and your employer's authorisation system.
Traps
- Saying a licence is a legal requirement - the legal requirement is competence; the card is only evidence.
- Quoting three years as a statutory refresher interval; it is guidance, not a fixed legal period.
- Assuming a banksman or supervisor takes over responsibility for the lift. They do not.