7. Equipment at Work
[ch 7: page 118]Key changes and developments since last year
• The general GMB union has won a landmark legal case on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE);
• From October 2015, a health and safety exemption that allowed Sikhs to wear a turban instead of a hard hat on construction sites has been extended by the Deregulation Act 2015 to all workplaces;
• A new directly-acting EU regulation on the manufacture and marketing of PPE has been agreed and will take effect in 2018.