Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996

Employers have a duty to ensure adequate, clear and legible safety signs and signals (frequently represented on signboards) are located within the workplace.

The signs and signals are to be used to identify four different types of actions: Prohibited; Warning; Mandatory, and Emergency escape and First-aid locations.

The Regulations define each term (Regulation 2(1)) as follows:
• Emergency escape or first-aid sign: “a sign giving information on escape routes or emergency exits or first-aid or rescue facilities;”
• Mandatory sign: “a sign prescribing behaviour;”
• Prohibition sign: “means a sign prohibiting behaviour likely to cause a risk to health or safety;”
• Warning sign: “means a sign giving a warning of a risk to health or safety.”
Some other terms include:
• Signboard: “a sign which provides information or instructions by a combination of geometric shape, colour and a symbol or pictogram and which is rendered visible by lighting of sufficient intensity;”
• Symbol or pictogram: “a figure which describes a situation or prescribes behaviour and which is used on a signboard or illuminated surface;”.

Employers must provide employees with “comprehensible and relevant information on the measures to be taken in connection with safety signs” and also provide “suitable and sufficient instruction and training in the meaning of safety signs and the measures to be taken in connection with safety signs” (Regulation 5).
The minimum requirements for the provision of safety signs and signals, which includes their colour, are given in Schedule 1: Part 1, whilst the minimum general requirements for signboards are given in Schedule 1: Part 2.
Safety sign colour, meaning and instructions (Schedule 1: Part 1):
Colour Meaning or purpose Instructions and information
Red • Prohibition sign
• Danger alarm
• Fire-fighting equipment • Dangerous behaviour
• Stop, shutdown, emergency cut out devices,
• Evacuate
• Identification and location
Yellow or Amber Warning sign • Be careful, take precautions
• Examine
Blue Mandatory sign • Specific behaviour or action
• Wear personal protective equipment
Green • Emergency escape
• First aid sign
• No danger • Doors, exits, routes, equipment, facilities
• Return to normal