Programme 06 · General duties and sector guidance
Safety-critical medicals
Some roles are ones where a sudden loss of consciousness or attention would put the worker or others in immediate danger. There is no single regulation naming them, which is precisely why they are the programme most often left undone until an incident makes the question unavoidable.
No regulation prints an interval, so a written policy is the defensible position. Having no view at all is the hard one to defend.
The duty
Where the obligation comes from
Unlike noise or vibration, safety-critical fitness assessment is not created by a single named regulation with a numeric threshold. It comes from the general duties and from sector guidance, which is why it is easy to overlook and hard to defend having overlooked.
- The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974The general duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of employees and of others affected by the work.
- The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999The duty to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of risk. Where sudden incapacity is a credible risk for a task, fitness for that task is part of that assessment.
- Equipment and task-specific rulesRequirements on competence and on the safe use of work equipment, plus specific regimes such as those covering confined spaces and lifting operations.
- Sector guidance and approved codesGuidance for particular equipment, notably for rider-operated lift trucks, recommends medical assessment on appointment and periodically thereafter.
Who is in scope
Roles usually treated as safety-critical
- Forklift, telehandler, reach truck and other rider-operated lift truck operators
- Mobile plant and heavy equipment operators, including excavators and loading shovels
- Crane operators, slingers and signallers
- Work at height, including scaffolders, steel erectors and tower work
- Confined space entry and rescue teams
- Driving for work, particularly where vocational standards are used as the reference
- Control room and process operators where a lapse has immediate physical consequences
- Lone workers in hazardous environments, where help would not be immediate
The programme
What is assessed
The assessment is against the task, not against a generic idea of good health. What matters is whether anything makes sudden incapacity or impaired attention materially more likely during this particular work.
| Area | Why it matters for the task |
|---|---|
| Loss of consciousness | Blackouts, fainting, seizures or epilepsy: the central question in almost every safety-critical role |
| Cardiovascular | Conditions carrying a risk of sudden collapse or of incapacitating symptoms under exertion |
| Diabetes | Specifically the risk of hypoglycaemia on the treatment regimen in use, rather than the diagnosis alone |
| Vision | Acuity, field of vision and, for some tasks, colour vision and depth perception |
| Hearing | Where audible warnings, alarms or verbal instruction are part of the safe system of work |
| Sleep disorders | Obstructive sleep apnoea and other causes of excessive daytime sleepiness |
| Medication | Anything with sedative effect, or that impairs reaction time or judgment |
| Musculoskeletal | Where the task requires specific movement, posture, grip or the ability to evacuate unaided |
| Mental health and substance use | Where a condition or its treatment materially affects attention, judgment or reaction |
Cadence
How often, and when to bring it forward
The common pattern is assessment on appointment to the role, then periodically, frequently every three to five years, shortening with age or with a relevant condition. Some sector guidance is more specific, and a well-run policy tends to increase frequency past a certain age band.
Cadence is not the whole answer, though, because the events that change someone's fitness do not wait for the cycle. A robust programme also reassesses after a significant illness, a hospital admission, a new diagnosis in one of the areas above, a change of medication, or a return to work after extended absence, and after any incident that raises a fitness question.
How Polarisk runs it
The programme, without the administration
The duty is mapped
Roles map to safety-critical medicals on the exposure criteria, so the list of who is owed an assessment is derived rather than remembered. Workers who need none are evidenced as such.
Each worker answers privately
A single-use link, bound to that person at issue and spent on use. Your organisation's own account is refused at the answers.
Protocol triages, a human judges
Responses are scored against the protocol and drafted for review. A registered clinician reads every case and signs under their own name and registration number.
The cycle runs itself
Due dates, reminders and lapse tracking are handled. You are told who has not answered, by name, while there is still time to act.
Evidence is generated
The audit pack comes from the live record: duty map, completion by site, certificate register and the sign-off trail behind each judgment.
Appointed-Doctor streams
Asbestos, lead, ionising radiation and compressed air require an HSE Appointed Doctor. We do not run those, and will say so rather than quote for them.
Questions
Common questions
Is a forklift medical actually a legal requirement?
There is no regulation that prints the words "forklift medical", but HSE guidance for rider-operated lift trucks recommends medical assessment on appointment and periodically afterwards, and the general duty to assess risk applies to the possibility of sudden incapacity while operating. In practice, an employer that has assessed the risk and concluded no fitness assessment is needed for plant operators is in a difficult position after an incident.
How often should safety-critical medicals be repeated?
Commonly on appointment and then every three to five years, shortening with age or where a relevant condition is present, unless sector guidance sets something more specific. Just as important is reassessment triggered by events: significant illness, a new diagnosis, a medication change, a long absence, or an incident that raises a fitness question.
Can we just ask people to declare their own health?
Self-declaration is a starting point, not an assessment. It relies on the worker knowing what is relevant and being willing to disclose it to their employer, which is exactly the situation where disclosure is least likely if they fear losing the role. A confidential route to a clinician, where the employer receives a fitness outcome rather than the disclosure, produces both better safety and better information.
What do we receive if someone is assessed as not fit?
The fitness outcome for that task and any recommended adjustment or restriction, plus a view on whether the position is temporary or likely to persist. You do not receive the clinical reason. That is usually enough to act on: the operational question is whether this person can safely do this task now, and if not, what would change that.
Does this replace a DVLA medical for our drivers?
No. Licensing standards are a separate regime with their own requirements, and a workplace safety-critical assessment does not discharge them. The two overlap in what they examine, and vocational licensing standards are often used as a reference point for demanding work tasks, but they answer different questions and are not interchangeable.
Start here
Find out what you owe before an inspector does
Four questions about your workforce and its exposures. You will get an estimate of the assessments owed each year, by programme, and where your current arrangement leaves a gap. No sign-up and no personal data.