Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

17.8.8
Part 4 Health and Safety on Construction 
Sites
The Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 
1996 (CHSW) have been revoked by CDM2007. Without 
the work at height provisions (Regulations 6, 7 and 8), 
their requirements form the basis of Part 4 and Schedule 
2 (Welfare facilities) of the CDM2007 Regulations. The 
revision is mainly intended to simplify and clarify the 
wording of the Regulations, without making substantive 
changes to what is expected in practice. One substantive 
change, however, has been to broaden the duty regarding 
explosives to cover the important issues of security and 
safety of storage and transport, as well as safety in use.
However, some issues already covered by the 
Workplace Regulations are particularly important in 
construction. These include traffi c management and 
lighting. Because these are so important CDM2007 
duplicate aspects of the Workplace Regulations require-
ments, although that was not legally necessary.
The issues covered by Part 4 apply to all construc-
tion projects and are as follows.
a) General – Regulations 25
Duties to comply with this part are placed on contractor 
or other person who controls the way in which construc-
tion work is carried on.
Duty placed on workers to report any defect they 
are aware of which may endanger the health and safety 
of themselves or another person.
b) Safe place of work – Regulation 26
This regulation requires so far as is reasonably practic-
able (sfarp):
➤
safe access and egress to places of work
➤
maintenance of access and egress
➤
that people are prevented from gaining access to 
unsafe access or workplaces
➤
provision of safe places of work with adequate 
space and suitable for workers.