Minimum Office light Levels

[pvcprinting]

Hi all,

Not been here for a while but an incident that I witnessed today has kicked my arse to be a more frequant visitor to these pages

Anyway, I went to pick up a friend from work this evening as her car was in for a service. I went to her usual spot in the office but was informed she had been moved?

When I eventually found her, her office had been moved into a 3m x 3m patch with a 3m ceiling....the only light she had in there apart from her pc monitor was 2 single flourescent strip lights mounted high up on the ceiling!

She complained on the way home of feeling unwell which has prompted me to post this thread

Does anybody have any idea of any minimum standards that must be met for a place to be used as an office?

Does it require any natural light
What is the minimum lux levels that must be met
what, if any are the restrictions on the use of IT within the area

Regards

Pete

[bwglaw]

Your best bet would be to explore the Health and Safety Executive website at http://www.hse.gov.uk which will no doubt have information on the other issues you mention.

Jonathan

[An Oasis]

Yah happens all the time fluorescent lights oscillate at ?hz per min and computer screens @ whatever the refresh rate, the outcome is PITA.

Get rid of the fluorescent will solve the problem.

[Gavin Harris]

I've worked for two companies now where there has been no natural light, so it would appear that is not a requirement.

I will now go out of my way to avoid having to work in a building with no natural light. It's horrible - you have no sense of what it's like outside: summer is exactly the same as winter, and night is exactly the same as day.

[AndyBrazier]

The issues mentioned are all covered by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. I'm not going to quote the regulations because they are not intended to provide specific standards. However, the general principle is that employers must provide safe and healthy working conditions.

To comply with regulations, lighting must be sufficient to work and move around safely. If someone is feeling unwell because of the lighting, which is quite common for people working in the conditions you describe, I would say this is a sign that the regulations are not being complied with. Clearly better lighting may be beneficial. Where there is no natural light, it is now possible to buy 'daylight simulation' bulbs and tubes, which people find an improvement on standard lights. In this case it may be possible to buy a desk lamp with one of these bulbs to supplement the ceiling mounted tubes.

Of course windows are also a good source of ventilation. Again the regulations require the workplace to be provided with fresh air, and to be comfortable in terms of temperature and humidity.

[KM-Tiger]

It's not so much the light level as the type of louvre, there is some info here:-

http://tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/Li...orisation.html

The fittings that comply are not expensive.

Personally I wouldn't work in an office that didn't have the right ones.

Originally Posted by AndyBrazier

The issues mentioned are all covered by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992..

For the non safety people, ever since HASWA 74 the law stopped being prescriptive - relying instead on employers to take case by case assessments - so you wont find a light level specified.

ALl the regs call for is "suitable and sufficient" lighting, and there is no obligation to provide natural lighting.

The one HOWEVER is that "suitable and sufficient" as used generally throughout the regs must be decided certainly with reference to the task and also to an extent the person: so what is suitable for someone just needing to work on IT, is not necessarily suitable for threading needles, or fixing watch mechanisms.

Clearly also, people need to move about safely.

And also what is adequate for one person is not necessarily adequate for another: - there is also an obligation on the employer to maintain, so that a flickering fluorescent is clearly a problem.

All of that said: the person in question will struggle to prove it is the lighting making them ill. - however a right thinking employer would generally take any easy steps that make there employers lot a happier one!

[jakandra]

In relation the HSE regulations, the welfare regs state that it is "preferred" that as much natural light as possible be used. It then recommends lighting levels such as is laid out by organisations like CIBSE (The Building/Surveyors organisation). These state a level of 500lux for general office work, raising up levels dependant upon what kind of work is being done. Generally you should have between 500 and 1,000 is there is more detailed work (drawign offices etc.) We do this testing for people quite a lot under auspices of sick building syndrome, as wella s co2 levels, humiidity, temperature, airflow etc., or just as tests on their own as there is a specific way to test these to read the levels. Any advice needed, let me know !

[KC12]

I have an awesome lumie dawn simulator (for my s.a.d) The company(is the first result on google for lumie) also sells daylight simulators and the brightspark is probably worth looking at if anyone wants to improve light in their office.

[coxadmin]

Guys, have you looked at the date of the original post or even post no 7?!!!!