HSE Launches Campaign Urging Employers to Assess and Control Workplace Noise and Vibration Risks

The HSE has launched a campaign urging employers to assess noise and vibration risks, reduce exposure and protect workers before their health suffers. It arrives during Bone and Joint Health Week and builds on the Prevention Programme's HAVS Risk Reduction Pledge. The message is direct: these conditions are preventable, but they rarely reverse.

Early in my career in environmental health, noise taught me how well ill health can hide. Nobody collapses and nobody fills in an accident book. People just start missing the ends of sentences, and by the time anyone notices, the damage is done. Four decades on, that pattern hasn't changed, which is why I welcome this campaign.

Key Takeaways

• The HSE says around 15,000 workers a year develop work-related hearing problems, and an estimated one in five is exposed to harmful noise levels.
• The campaign asks employers to assess, control and protect.
• Noise and vibration sit in two separate sets of regulations, yet the same tools and people are often involved.
• Hearing protection is the last line of defence, and it is often poorly managed.
• Health surveillance results show whether your controls actually work.

What Is the HSE Noise and Vibration Campaign?

It is an HSE campaign asking employers to follow three steps: assess, control and protect. The aim is to stop occupational ill health before it starts.

Exposure comes from everyday tools, machinery and equipment. It affects construction, manufacturing, agriculture, utilities, waste management, engineering, maintenance, and entertainment and events. Here is how the two hazards compare.

The effects reach beyond work. Hearing loss makes conversations with family and friends harder, tinnitus disrupts sleep and concentration, and HAVS can turn fastening a button or holding a cup into a struggle.

Why Do Workers Miss the Warning Signs?

Because the harm builds slowly and painlessly. Ears ring after a loud shift, fingers tingle after a morning on a breaker, and both get put down to the job. Chris Steel, the HSE's Principal Specialist Inspector for noise and vibration, points out that workers may not realise they are being harmed until their hearing is affected or the pain, numbness or tingling begins.

I like the HSE's rule of thumb for noise: if people have to shout to be heard at two metres, you probably have a problem. It costs nothing and takes ten seconds, so it makes a useful first screen before the formal assessment.

What Do Employers Have to Do Under the Regulations?

Employers have legal duties to assess and control these risks under the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 and the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005. The campaign turns those duties into three steps.

1. Assess. Identify who may be exposed, understand the risks and carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessments.
2. Control. Cut exposure at source with quieter or lower-vibration equipment, well-maintained tools and machinery, engineering controls and safer ways of working.
3. Protect. Where risk remains, provide suitable hearing protection, arrange health surveillance where required, and give workers the information, instruction and training they need.

Where Do Employers Most Often Go Wrong?

Across years of reviewing workplace assessments, I see the same four gaps.

Treating hearing protection as the answer. It is the last resort, and it is often badly managed. The HSE's earlier noise inspection campaign, as summarised by law firm Richardson Lissack, found that 80% of employees in noisy workplaces had not been trained to wear hearing protection correctly. It also found that 95% of employers had not checked whether workers could still hear fire alarms and reversing alerts. The HSE's CUFF check (Condition, Use, Fit the ear, Fit for purpose) closes much of that gap.

Running two assessments that never meet. A breaker, grinder or saw often produces both noise and vibration. One task-based assessment covering both shows the full picture of an operator's day and saves duplicated effort.

Buying first and measuring later. The cheapest control is the one you choose at purchase or hire. Ask suppliers for noise and vibration emission data up front, and remember that declared figures come from test conditions, so real-world exposure can run higher.

Ignoring what surveillance is telling you. Many employers treat health surveillance as a compliance box. I treat it as feedback. If early changes appear in one team, your controls are not working for that team, whatever the paperwork says.

How Can Safety Professionals Turn the Campaign Into Action?

Start with the people nearest the tools, then work outwards.

• Map exposure by task rather than job title, so you can see who works with what.
• Assess noise and vibration together for shared tools and processes.
• Add emission data to your purchase and hire specifications.
• Run a CUFF check on hearing protection, including whether workers can hear alarms.
• Review surveillance trends and feed them back into your risk assessments.
• Brief workers on early symptoms and how to report them without worry.

Most of this needs attention rather than budget.

Frequently Asked Questions

At What Noise Level Do Employers Have to Act?

The lower exposure action value is 80 dB(A) and the upper is 85 dB(A), measured as daily or weekly exposure. The exposure limit value is 87 dB(A) once hearing protection is taken into account.

What Is HAVS?

Hand-arm vibration syndrome is damage to the nerves, blood vessels and joints of the hands and arms caused by regular use of vibrating tools. Symptoms include numbness, tingling, pain and reduced grip strength.

Is Hearing Protection Enough to Comply?

No. Employers should reduce noise at source first. Hearing protection is for the risk that remains.

Who Is Most at Risk?

Anyone regularly using noisy or vibrating equipment, particularly in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, utilities, waste management, engineering, maintenance, and entertainment and events.

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