Issuing PPE: what you have to record, and what people actually need

PPE sits awkwardly in a stores system. It is consumed like a consumable, issued to a named person like an asset, and carries a duty like neither. Most stores end up treating it as bulk stock, which works until somebody asks who has what.

The duties, briefly

Under the PPE at Work Regulations, an employer has to provide suitable equipment where a risk cannot be controlled another way, and — the part that gets forgotten — provide it free of charge. No deposits, no deduction for a replacement, no charge for a lost pair.

"Suitable" is doing real work in that sentence. It means suitable for the risk, for the conditions, and for the person: gloves that fit, respirators that seal on the face they are worn on, boots in the size actually needed. Equipment that does not fit is not compliance with a fitting problem — it is not suitable equipment.

Why an issue record exists

Not to catch people out. Three practical reasons, in order of how often they matter:

1. Replacement timing. PPE has a service life, and the only way to know a harness is four years old is to know when it was issued. Without that, the answer is a guess dressed up as a date.
2. Recall. When a batch is found defective, you need the list of who has it. This is the same problem as a calibration recall and it has the same solution: custody, recorded at issue.
3. Evidence that it was provided. If somebody was injured without the equipment, the question is whether it was available and issued. "We keep them in the cupboard" is not an answer.

The record is not there to prove somebody was given gloves. It is there so that when the gloves turn out to be the wrong ones, you know whose hands they are on.

What to record, and what to leave alone

The temptation is a full asset register per item, which nobody sustains for a box of gloves. Split it by service life instead:

That third row is where PPE stops being stock and becomes an asset: anything with an expiry date, an inspection requirement, or a serial number needs a row of its own, because the question "is this one still in date" is about a specific object.

Sizes, which are the whole game

The most useful thing a stores system can do for PPE is remember what size somebody takes. It sounds trivial. It is the difference between a person collecting boots in ninety seconds and a person trying on four pairs, or taking the wrong size because they are in a hurry and the right one is not there.

It also fixes the stocking problem underneath. If you know your issue history by size, you know that you go through twelve pairs of size 10 and two of size 13 a year — so you stock accordingly instead of holding a flat spread that runs out at the common sizes and gathers dust at the ends.

And it surfaces the uncomfortable one. Ranges that only fit some people — gloves cut for large hands, harnesses sized for one body shape — show up as a pattern of people taking a size that does not exist, or not collecting at all. That is a purchasing decision hiding in an issue log.

Replacement without an argument

The friction is always the same: somebody needs new gloves, the store wants to know why, and the person concludes it is easier to carry on with the old ones. Every policy that makes replacement feel like a request for permission produces exactly that.

• Set an expected life per item and let a replacement inside it be routine, not a conversation.
• Record a reason on the replacement — worn, damaged, lost, contaminated — because the pattern is genuinely useful and asking for one word is not friction.
• Watch for the item that is always replaced early. That is a specification problem, and it is cheaper to buy the better glove than to buy the cheap one three times.
• Never charge for a replacement. Beyond being unlawful for PPE, it guarantees people work with damaged equipment.

Nilstock issues consumables and individual items through the same terminal, against a named person, so a PPE issue is one scan rather than a separate register — and anything with an expiry or an inspection date is held as its own asset with its own history. The construction and maintenance stores pages cover the surrounding workflows. For the inspection side of harnesses and similar, see inspection records for work equipment.