19.02.2025

HSE letter re emergency stops

The UK’s Health & Safety Executive – the HSE – has written to manufacturers and suppliers regarding the isolation of controls on aerial work platforms.

It starts by pointing out that it has a role to provide guidance on such issues as a market surveillance authority, directing recipients to check this out on www.hse.gov.uk/work-equipment-machinery/hse-role-market-surveillance authority. However, it is also aware that some points in its letter are impractical, at the same time it has been in discussions with IPAF and its manufacturers committee as well as the International Safety Committee, but in spite of this fired off the letter the text of which is published in full below:

The letter says:
"I am writing to remind you of your legal duties as a manufacturer or supplier and draw your attention to the requirements relating to the MEWP emergency stop system.

Legal requirements
The Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 sets out specific requirements to ensure that safe machinery is placed on the market or put into service in Great Britain. These Regulations (which implement the requirements of Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC into UK law) place duties on the manufacturer of the machinery or the manufacturer’s authorised representative established in the UK.

Section 6 of the Health and Safety at Work Act applies to the supply of any article for use at work. Section 6(1)(a) requires importers and suppliers of articles for use at work to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the article is so designed and constructed that it will be safe and without risks to health at all times when it is being used by a person at work.

Guidance for businesses on the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008 can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supply-of-machinery-safety-regulations-2008
Further guidance can be found at Are you a supplier, importer or distributor of equipment -Equipment and machinery (hse.gov.uk)

Emergency Stop Requirement
Before machinery is placed on the market or put it into service the responsible person must ensure that the applicable essential health and safety requirements (EHSRs) of the Regulations are satisfied. EHSR 1.2.4.3 relates to emergency stop requirements. It states that Machinery must be fitted with one or more emergency stop devices to enable actual or impending danger to be averted. The emergency stop must stop the hazardous process as quickly as possible, without creating additional risks.

Compliance with standards is a means of conforming to EHSRs. The presumption of conformity provided by a standard only applies if the requirements of the normative references referred to in the text have also been followed. MEWPs may be manufactured to the standard EN 280-1:2022, Mobile elevating work platforms - Design calculations - Stability criteria – Construction – Safety - Examinations and tests (or the previous version of this standard). This standard refers to normative references, including BS EN ISO 13850:2015, Safety of machinery - Emergency stop function Principles for design, and its content constitutes a requirement of the EN280 standard.

BS EN ISO 13850 requires that The emergency stop function shall not impair the effectiveness of other safety functions. (4.1.1.4).

This means that:
Activating the emergency stop on a MEWP must not disable the safety related parts of the machine’s control system such as overload monitoring, inclination monitoring, stabiliser / outrigger monitoring, and associated alarms.
Duty of the manufacturer or supplier

If you manufacture or supply MEWPs you must ensure that the emergency stop meets these
legal requirements. If the MEWP does not meet these requirements, it must not be supplied in Great Britain.

Actions to take
Check that the emergency stop systems for the MEWPs supplied by you meet these requirements. There is no need to confirm to HSE that your MEWPs meet the requirements. If they do not meet the requirements:
-Cease supply.

-Provide HSE with details by 31st March 2025 including the make and model of the MEWP
and actions you are taking to remedy. Contact [email protected]
- Inform existing customers how to safely use the MEWP and advise them if there is a
retrofit available to resolve.
-If you are relying on the standard EN 280-1:2022 and the emergency stop disables any
safety functions, provide HSE with details of the conformity assessment body (that is, the
notified body or approved body). Contact [email protected]
If you do not contact HSE, and it is later found that this issue is present on your MEWPs,
further enforcement action may follow.

Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions.
Yours faithfully

Product Safety and Market Surveillance Unit"

Joint industry response
IPAF, FEM and the AEM which represent a wide spectrum of manufacturers across the globe have issued a response today that highlights the concerns with the letter Their joint response is carried in full below the our comment - but it boils down to a call for three actions:

• Firstly, the HSE retracts the letter or it is reissued removing the confusing wording.
• Secondly, joint technical discussions resume to move any potential issues forward.
• Thirdly, work to improve the future standards if necessary by technical engagement in the right standards bodies.

Vertikal Comment

The sending of this letter is bizarre in the extreme, in that the HSE was and is working with IPAF and others to find a realistic solution or policy and yet seemingly arbitrarily decided to issue this communication without further consultation.

It reinforces a belief that a fair few people in industry hold, that the HSE is more interested in blame, prosecutions, and covering its backside. It is as though someone in the hierarchy has said: “What happens if there is an accident related to this issue and the ‘powers that be’ discover that we were aware that there had been an issue? Let’s get a letter out that we can put in the file!"

I would hate to think that this was the case, but it is hard to understand what else has driven it to do this. If this letter was taken seriously almost all aerial lifts in the UK would need to be stood down and the supply of new machines stopped. This would of course force people to turn to alternatives such as ladders, scaffolds, baskets on telehandlers and cranes. All of which are less safe and less productive.

IPAF, FEM and the AEM have issued a formal response letter today which we carry in full below:

Health and Safety Executive
18th February 2025
Mobile Elevating Work Platform Industry response to HSE PSMSU
Thank you for your letter dated 23rd January 2025, regarding the embodiment of Emergency Stop solutions on Mobile Elevating Work Platforms.

The access industry is focused on continuous improvement to the safety of MEWP machinery and believe we understand the basic intent behind your request. We would like to support your position on this matter; however, we believe the HSE interpretation of existing requirements differs from the industry’s view, and this has caused some confusion.

The industry is surprised at the sudden release of this letter after an 18 month period of consultation between IPAF MTC and HSE. HSE has had representation on MHE12/1 (British Standards Institute) and TC98/WG1 (The technical committee responsible for developing EN 280 standard series) for many years. We are concerned that the HSE have not fully considered the consequences of the proposed action based on the HSE’s interpretation, and there is the potential for safety and commercial implications associated with the actions on the back of the interpretations within the letter.

We do not support the HSE’s detailed interpretation of the standards BS EN 280-1:2022 and BS EN ISO 13850:2015. It is our belief that the HSE letter has added requirements that are not described in the designated standards. We support the need to find an appropriate response and we are aligned in principle with the position, per 4.1.1.4 of BS EN ISO 13850:2015 as referenced in your letter that activating the Emergency Stop function shall not ‘impair the effectiveness of other safety functions.’

In your letter you state that ‘This means that: ‘Activating the emergency stop on a MEWP must not disable the safety related parts of the machine’s control system such as overload monitoring, inclination monitoring, stabiliser / outrigger monitoring, and associated alarms.’’ 1 of 4 The contributors to this letter, including manufacturers and trade associations, are of the opinion that HSE PSMSU have formed a unique interpretation of the current requirements and expect this to be applied to relevant certified machines. HSE document DPN060723 (A summary of collaborative discussion between HSE and IPAF MTC, 6th July 2023) notes: ‘The term safety function is defined in ISO 13850:2015 as “function of a machine whose failure can result in an immediate increase of risk(s)” which mirrors ISO 12100.

Note that [failure of] alarms and notifications defined in EN280 do not result in an immediate increase of risk(s) and are also not defined in the safety devices within table 5 of EN280.’ We had understood from this that HSE did not consider alarms and notifications to be safety functions.

We are concerned with HSE’s apparent change of position in this regard and that the subtle expansion in language between the published standards and the HSE interpretation from ‘safety function’ to ‘safety related parts of the control system’ and ‘associated alarms’ would create new requirements that are not described in BS EN 280-1 or BS EN ISO 13850.

We agree that Emergency Stops shall not impair the effectiveness of safety functions. However, HSE’s interpretation of the requirements has extrapolated the requirement from BS EN ISO 13850 to include, for example, alarms which are not safety functions. Each safety function on the MEWP creates a safe action by preventing movement.

Currently, alarms and certain monitoring systems serve only to provide additional operational awareness. The industry would like to alleviate the PSMSU’s concerns and to do this a common interpretation of the published standards would be needed and technical clarity would also be needed to understand the potentially extensive derived requirements.

The majority of MEWPs on the market have been independently assessed and certified as safe to the state of the art by approved or notified bodies from the UK and EU nation states. Also, these MEWPs have for many years been successfully placed on markets outside the UK and EU, having met local safety and compliance requirements. European market surveillance project JAHARP2021-04, led by Prosafe, involved nine Market Surveillance Authorities from seven EU Member States and inspected a total of 43 MEWP models placed on the market against the Machinery Directive and the EN 280 standards in force at the time.

This activity considered inclination sensing, stabilisers, load control systems, MEWP controls, emergency stops, duplicate controls, and emergency lowering systems. This comprehensive industry study identified no issues that relate to the HSE’s interpretation of EN 280-1 and its implementation, with MEWPs placed on the market and the undersigned believe that the UK
HSE stands alone in its interpretation of the state-of-the-art requirements. The authors are not aware of a history of concerns. On the contrary, the authors believe that the in-service record of MEWPs demonstrates appropriate selection of safety functions in EN 280, which are also broadly aligned to those within ISO 16368 and in other regional safety standards such as ANSI A92.20.

We support development of state-of-the-art in evolving standards including BS EN 280-1 and believe that any proposal for the introduction of additional safety functions and alarm behaviours should be presented to the CEN Technical Committee developing EN 280-1 for inclusion based on a risk-based approach within the industry. 2 of 4 We would like to propose an alternative and collaborative way forward:

-Firstly, we request that the HSE/PSMSU urgently (as soon as possible but by the end of February 2025) retracts its letter dated 23rd January 2025 and do not use it as the basis for market surveillance activity or enforcement. If a full retraction is not possible, then we propose that the letter is revised and reissued this month with the HSE interpretation paragraph after “this means that:” removed in the bullet below: o Activating the emergency stop on a MEWP must not disable the safety related parts of the machine’s control system such as overload monitoring, inclination monitoring, stabiliser / outrigger monitoring, and associated alarms. •

-Secondly, we propose urgent joint technical discussions between the HSE and representatives of the undersigned organisations in February 2025 to establish a common understanding and how best to respond to the HSE’s concerns within your letter.

-Thirdly, as part of the technical discussions, we would seek your input to the industry Type C standard BS EN 280-1:2022 through the CEN Technical Committee TC98/WG1 – with the objective to understand further the HSE’s interpretation for safety functions and alarm behaviours and agreeing a way forward to ensure consistent interpretation and application of the published standards. This work could then align with the implementation of the machinery regulation 2023/1230/EU, and standards BS EN ISO 13849, and BS EN ISO 13850. The access industry is committed to improving safety and we look forward to working with you to resolve your concerns in a safe, pragmatic, and reasonably practicable way.

Please direct any responses to Brian Parker, Head of Safety & Technical, IPAF, [email protected], on behalf of: James Clare MTC Chairman IPAF MTC Vincent Berier MEWPs Group President FEM Jason Berry MEWPC Chairman AEM.