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1. Overview

As an employer, you must protect your workers from the risk of injury from hazardous manual handling in the workplace. Manual handling means transporting or supporting a load by hand or bodily force. It includes lifting, putting down, pushing, pulling, carrying or moving loads. A load can be an object, person or animal.

The law sets out how employers must deal with risks from manual handling:

  • avoid hazardous manual handling, so far as reasonably practicable[6]
  • assess the risk of injury from any hazardous manual handling operations that cannot be avoided
  • reduce the risk of injury from hazardous manual handling to as low as reasonably practicable

The weight of a load is important, though the law does not set specific weight limits.

In some cases, you must provide information[7] about the weight and position of the centre of gravity of each load, if there is a risk of injury and it is reasonably practicable to do this.

Link URLs in this page

  1. Avoid hazardous manual handlinghttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/avoid-hazardous-manual-handling.htm
  2. Assess manual handling you can’t avoidhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/assess-manual-handling.htm
  3. Reduce the risk of injuryhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/reduce-risk-injury.htm
  4. Traininghttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/training.htm
  5. The lawhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/the-law.htm
  6. so far as reasonably practicablehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/index.htm
  7. provide informationhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/labellingloads.htm
  8. Next page Avoid hazardous manual handling https://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/avoid-hazardous-manual-handling.htm
  9. View a printable version of the whole guidehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/manual-handling/print.htm
  10. Manual handling leaflethttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg143.htm
  11. Legal guidance on the Manual Handling Operations Regulationshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/l23.htm
  12. External help on manual handlinghttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/external-help.htm
  13. Making the best use of lifting and handling aidshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg398.htm
  14. MAC tool leaflethttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg383.htm
  15. RAPP tool leaflethttps://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg478.htm

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Updated:2024-03-25-->