Interpretation
2.—(1) In these Regulations—
“the Act” means the Merchant Shipping Act 1995;
“access” and “egress” include ascent and descent;
“collective safeguard” means a system or device to prevent or arrest workers in general from falling while working at height, including a guardrail, barrier or safety net but excluding equipment for preventing or arresting the fall of an individual worker;
“the Directive” means Directive 2001/45/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Directive 89/655/EEC concerning the minimum safety and health requirements for the use of work equipment by workers at work (second individual Directive within the meaning of Article 16(1) of Directive 89/391/EEC)(1);
“the General Duties Regulations” means the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Health and Safety at Work) Regulations 1997(2);
“employer” means a means a person by whom a worker is employed under a contract of employment;
“Government ship” has the meaning given in section 308(4) of the Act;
“health and safety” includes the occupational health and safety of persons whilst on board a ship and whilst boarding or leaving a ship;
“ladder” means any ladder, including a fixed ladder, a grappling ladder, a stepladder, a pilot ladder and a rope ladder;
“personal suspension equipment” means suspended access equipment for use by an individual, and includes a bosun’s chair and abseiling equipment;
“rope” includes a line, wire, chain or webbing;
“rope access and positioning techniques” includes personal suspension equipment;
“ship” includes hovercraft;
“surveyor of ships” has the meaning given by section 256(9) of the Act;
“United Kingdom ship” means a ship which—
is a United Kingdom ship within the meaning of section 85(2) of the Act;
is a Government ship; or
is a hovercraft registered under the Hovercraft Act 1968(3);
“United Kingdom waters” means the sea or other waters within the seaward limits of the territorial sea of the United Kingdom;
“work at height” means—
work in any place on a ship, including—
work alongside an open hatch or other opening in the ship’s structure;
work in close proximity to, or supported from, the ship’s side;
work on a permanent stairway, gangway, or companionway in or on the ship (other than where that permanent stairway, gangway or companionway is used as a means of obtaining access to or egress from any place on the ship); or
obtaining access to or egress from any place on a ship while at work except by a permanent stairway, gangway or companionway in or on the ship where that permanent stairway, gangway or companionway is used for the purpose it was designed for;
where, if the measures required by these Regulations were not taken, a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury;
“work equipment” means any machinery, appliance, apparatus, tool or installation for use at work (whether exclusively or not) and includes a working platform, means of preventing or arresting falls, personal suspension equipment and anything to which any provision of regulations 12 to 15 and Schedules 1 to 3 applies;
“the Work Equipment Regulations” means the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Provision and Use of Work Equipment) Regulations 2006(4) and the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment) Regulations 2006(5);
“the Work Equipment Directive” means Council Directive 89/655/EEC concerning the minimum safety and health requirements for the use of work equipment by workers at work (second individual Directive within the meaning of Article 16(1) of Directive 89/391/EEC)(6), as amended by Council Directive 95/63/EC(7);
“working platform” in relation to a ship, means any platform used as a place of work on the ship or as a means of access to or egress from a place of work on the ship, and—
includes any scaffold, scaffolding tower, suspended scaffold, cradle, mobile platform, trestle, gangway, run, gantry, stairway and crawling ladder (whether or not permanently attached to a ship);
does not include personal suspension equipment;
does not include a ship itself.
(2) A reference in these Regulations to “application of the regulation 8 criteria” is a reference to following the process provided for in regulation 8.
(3) Subject to paragraph (1) and regulation 3, words and expressions used in these Regulations have the same meaning as in the Directive and the Work Equipment Directive.
(4) In the application of these Regulations to a hovercraft, a reference to the master of a ship includes a reference to the captain of that hovercraft.
OJ No L 195, 19.7.2001, p. 46. The application of the Directive was extended to the EEA from 20th April 2002 by virtue of Decision No. 39/2002 of the EEA Joint Committee (O.J. No L 154, 13.6.2002, p. 25) which inserted a reference to the Directive in point 10 of Annex XVIII to the EEA Agreement.
S.I. 1997/2962, as amended by S.I. 1998/2411 and S.I. 2001/54.
O.J. No L 393, 30.12.1989, p. 13.
O.J. No L 335, 30.12.1995, p. 28.