Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007, Part 7 Chapter 1: Safety Signs at Places of Work.

The General Application Regulations are made under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and came into operation on 1 November 2007. Chapter 1 of Part 7 re-transposes Council Directive 92/58/EEC. Regulation 158 defines the terms, 159 sets the application (every place of work, excluding signs for placing products on the market and transport signals), 160 places the duty on employers to provide signs where hazards cannot be avoided or adequately reduced by other means, 161 covers information and instruction for employees and 162 prohibits unauthorised information on signs.

Schedule 9 holds the technical detail in nine parts, A to I: general requirements, signboards, containers and pipes, fire-fighting equipment, obstacles and traffic routes, illuminated signs, acoustic signs, verbal communication and hand signals. It was amended in 2016 by S.I. No. 70 of 2016 to reflect the EU chemical labelling changes.

The Health and Safety Authority's free Guide to Chapter 1 of Part 7, published in 2007 and revised in December 2016, walks through each regulation and Schedule 9 with diagrams of correct and incorrect sign combinations. It is clear that a signboard is a combination of shape, colour and pictogram without written words, so that it can be understood regardless of literacy or language. That point matters on Irish projects where the instinct is to add bilingual text to everything: any words go on the supplementary board.

The HSA guide is published with all rights reserved, so we link to it rather than host it.

The General Application Regulations govern what a safety sign looks like and the employer's duty to provide it. Where escape signs go in a new building is set by Technical Guidance Document B and the fire safety certificate, and their illumination by I.S. 3217. Because the UK regulations implement the same Directive, the design rules line up closely with the Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 in Great Britain and their Northern Ireland twin.