The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has issued a safety notice for pop-up toilets that are commonly found in busy city centres, when during the day they are hidden underneath the pavement and are raised hydraulically to street level at night time for people to use.
This notice follows a fatal accident that took place in January 2023, when a pop-up toilet crushed a maintenance operative who got trapped and died of asphyxiation after the toilet began to lower down when he was underneath in the void carrying out repairs.
The HSE identified potential dangers from:
which could lead to people being trapped and crushed underneath those toilets.
The HSE identified a solution to mitigate this risk by preventing the mechanism from lowering when someone is accessing the chamber below the pop-up toilet by adopting suitable engineering controls, such as mechanical safeguarding devices or introducing measures such as pit prop, movable stop or stand which can be fitted and locked into position before anyone can access the chamber.
When choosing engineering controls you should think about chamber access and the associated clearances available to the operative, limit the necessity to enter the void under the raised toilet, and make sure that such controls safeguard against the unintentional lowering of a raised pop-up toilet during toilet chamber access, cleaning and maintenance activities. Any engineering controls must be kept in good working order.
HSE also calls on duty holders to make sure that anyone inspecting, maintaining or cleaning pop-up toilets or anyone fitting or maintaining engineering safety control measures have adequate health and safety information, and are provided with written instructions on fitting and using those control measures, where appropriate.
For more information on this subject, see:
