Blog: Inspecting PFPE 2nd Edition
Our highly respected reference book gets a 2020 update!
Thousands of people use this unique textbook, but the UK's departure from the European Union, plus a number of changes to EN product standards, made a new edition necessary. We took the opportunity to add in some extra information on lifting equipment, and to refresh the page design so it matches our OEM training course materials. This redesign allows the page count to stay the same, so the retail cover price is still only GBP 29.95. Existing trade customers' discount schedules are also kept the same as before.
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The main question we get asked is how Brexit affects PPE, and there is both a simple and a complicated answer! The simple answer is "Until December 2020, not much...", but for those who are slightly curious, let's dive into some amendments to amendments!
Why does Brexit change anything?
EU laws come in two basic types, Directives and Regulations. Both are mandatory for Member States, but they are applied in different ways. A Directive has to be "implemented" into national statute law for each Member State, and it is only those national laws which have any validity in the courts. In the UK, that usually happened by the creation of an new Statutory Instrument, or the amendment of an existing one. Although the Directive came from the EU, the result was a British domestic law. Brexit has not changed that; any UK statute laws that existed before Exit Day remain in place, the only amendments made are to change the wording of sections that talk about EU-specific rules.
The other type of EU law is a Regulation, which has direct power in every Member State. There is no domestic law created to implement it, only tweaks to support what it does (revoking obsolete stuff or making allowances for prosecutions). Brexit disconnected the UK from all the EU Regulations, since by definition they only apply to Member States; but unlike with Directives there is no fall-back domestic law to take over. So, the UK Government downloaded copies of all the relevant Regulations on 31 January 2020, went through them with a digital Tippex and changed all the mentions of "EU" to "UK", then put the whole lot onto a website at the National Archives. This "frozen" copy of the EU Regulations is what the UK will follow during the implementation/withdrawal period, so even if the EU amends a Regulation in the next few months, our copy will stay the same.
This is important because the supply and approval of PPE is (was!) controlled by an EU Regulation, number 2016/425. When this arrived, all the domestic UK laws covering supply (import and sales) of PPE were revoked, so without some major overhauls there would have been no laws left to cover it! Note that the workplace use of PPE (and the duty of employers to provide it) are covered by domestic UK laws, some of which are the result of previous Directives, and these have not changed other than some tweaks to language.
The major effect is that the UK's Personal Protective Equipment Regulations 2002 [SI 2002/1144], which was mostly revoked in 2016, has been un-revoked, and all of the relevant bits of 2016/425 have been tacked on to an appendix. There are also semantic changes to LOLER, such as deleting "EU" from the phrase "EU Certificate of Conformity". All of this has been done by the wonderfully-named Product Safety and Metrology etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (which were then amended again by the Product Safety, Metrology and Mutual Recognition Agreement (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, because stuff got forgotten about).
CE Marking
The CE Marking scheme that shows a product meets the "Basic Health and Safety Requirements" for import and sale in the EU was created by a Directive, but it also gets caught up in the Brexit spider web because there are strict rules on who can issue certificates allowing the CE Marking to be applied. Testing labs that only operate outside the EU cannot issue certificates for CE Marking, and that means labs in the UK. To solve this, the UK government has creaked the UK Conformity Assessment Mark (UKCA), which will operate as a direct replacement for CE Marking on products for the UK. Of course there are two big problems with that idea:
- Nobody else (including the EU) recognizes the UKCA mark
- Manufacturers are not going to re-tool just to put a logo on stuff unless there's a commercial benefit
During the implementation/transition period, products made for the EU market, with a CE Marking, remain legal to supply (import, sell and buy) in the UK - but products with only a UKCA mark are only legal within the UK.
EN standards
EuroNorm product standards are central to the EU's system of consumer safety, and Member States must publish copies of every EN standard via their national agencies (in the UK that's the BSI). They must also ensure any domestic standards that contradict an EN standard are revoked. Yet again Brexit changes things, as there is no longer anyone forcing the UK to take up new or updated EN standards. It will be purely the decision of the Secretary of State as to which standards apply to the UK market, or not. Of course all the existing standards (and there are tens of thousands) remain in force and can be used for product testing, but the situation going forward is far from clear. Will the UK start to adopt standards from elsewhere, such as ANSI-OSHA, as part of trade deals? What happens when those standards contradict EN standards, or the equipment made under them is dangerous when combined with European products? Nobody knows.
How we are dealing with it
Inspecting PFPE 2nd Edition is a UK book, and covers the situation as of February 2020. It still refers to EN standards, since you're not going to see harnesses and lanyards made to anything else in the immediate future, but it explains how things work during the implementation/withdrawal period and what could happen afterwards. If the rules change dramatically in 2021, a 3rd edition will be published!
Posted 2020-02-23 23:00:00 TAGS: Books