Networks, masts and field engineering, UK wide
Technology and Telecoms Health and Safety
A network is built and maintained by small teams working at height, underground and beside stored electrical energy, usually alone and often at night. AL23 Safety provides health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering support to network operators, tower owners, infrastructure contractors and technology businesses across the UK.
Why it matters in technology and telecoms
The risks are real and so are the duties
Start with an honest statement. There is no telecoms health and safety statute. We looked for a regulatory change specific to the sector in 2025 or 2026 and found none. What you are judged against is general law applied to an unusually hostile set of workplaces, plus whatever a competent contractor would have done on the day.
The numbers point at the obvious hazard. HSE recorded 126 worker deaths in 2025/26 and falls from height accounted for 31 of them, close to a quarter of the total. Telecoms concentrates that exposure. It also concentrates the enforcement problem of deep subcontract chains, where the duty holder who assessed the climber is three companies away from the licensee whose antenna is being installed. Where an inspector finds a material breach, Fee for Intervention runs at £188 per hour from 1 April 2026. The live pressures on the sector are volume rather than legislation, driven by full fibre and 5G build, the Public Switched Telephone Network switch off and lithium-ion storage arriving in the network estate ahead of settled UK guidance.
The main risks
Where the harm comes from
Falls from masts, towers and rooftops
Lattice towers, monopoles and rooftop structures cannot be worked from the ground so the whole regime rests on anchorage integrity, structural adequacy and a rescue plan that works within minutes.
Radio frequency exposure on live structures
Climbing past a transmitting antenna is a controlled operation, not a routine one. On a shared structure no single operator controls every emitter.
Confined spaces in chambers and ducts
Jointing chambers, footway boxes, manholes and sub-floor voids can hold oxygen deficient air, gas ingress from adjacent mains and sewer gases such as hydrogen sulphide and methane.
Lone and remote working
Field engineers, cabinet technicians and exchange staff routinely work alone with poor coverage, no witness and no one due to miss them until the next morning.
Street works and live traffic
Excavation in the carriageway and footway puts workers next to moving vehicles and puts pedestrians, wheelchair users and cyclists into diverted routes that have to be safe as designed.
Battery and DC power rooms
A battery string cannot be switched off, hydrogen evolves during charging, prospective short circuit currents are very high and lithium racks add thermal runaway and toxic off-gassing.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 set the base duties. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 govern all mast, tower and rooftop work through the hierarchy of avoid, prevent and mitigate, with Schedule 5 applying directly to rope access and work positioning. The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 apply to hoisting antennas and equipment. The Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016 govern occupational exposure to radio frequency fields. The Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 and ACOP L101 apply to chambers, ducts and voids. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 govern power room and DC plant work. The Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 with ACOP L138 apply to hydrogen evolution from charging lead acid batteries. Street works sit under Part III of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, with permit schemes under the Traffic Management Act 2004, the statutory code Safety at Street Works and Road Works and the DfT Traffic Signs Manual Chapter 8. Buried services follow HSG47. The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 as amended in 2022 now extend PPE duties to limb (b) workers, which matters in a sector that runs on subcontracted climbing teams.
Radio frequency exposure, stated precisely
The Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016 require you to assess the levels of electromagnetic fields your employees may be exposed to, keep exposure below the exposure limit values and, where the action levels are exceeded, determine whether the limit values are exceeded and put an action plan in place. There are two families of limit value, sensory effects and health effects. The regulations also cover indirect risks including interference with active implanted medical devices and ignition of flammable atmospheres. Expectant mothers and employees with implanted or body worn medical devices are expressly identified as at particular risk. HSG281 is the guidance. Note the boundary that is regularly blurred. ICNIRP guidelines and Ofcom licence conditions govern general public exposure. They are a different regime from CEMFAW, which is occupational only. Quoting one against the other proves nothing.
Rope access and where the duty actually sits
IRATA International runs the certification scheme through its International Code of Practice and its Training, Assessment and Certification Scheme. Level 1 and Level 2 technicians work under a Level 3 supervisor who must be on site and in charge. The core rule is two independently anchored ropes, a working line and a back-up line, with every technician attached to both. Here is the limitation worth stating plainly. IRATA cards certify the technician. They do not transfer the legal duty. Rope access is a work at height method so the Work at Height Regulations 2005 apply to you as the employer whatever the cards say.
Fire safety in technology and telecoms
The estate burns in plant rooms, not in offices
The fire risk in a network estate is concentrated in exchanges, base station cabinets, UPS and rectifier rooms and battery strings. Lead acid charging evolves hydrogen, which is a DSEAR matter requiring ventilation rate calculation and hazardous area classification of the room rather than a fire risk assessment note. Lithium-ion racks are a different problem again, with thermal runaway, flammable and toxic off-gassing and a fire that conventional suppression is not designed to arrest. Where a room is protected by clean agent or inert gas, the asphyxiation and over-pressurisation risks to anyone inside at discharge have to be assessed alongside the protection benefit.
Unstaffed and remotely monitored buildings raise a separate question. An exchange that nobody occupies for weeks still needs a current fire risk assessment under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, still needs its detection maintained and still needs an arrangement for the lone engineer who arrives at two in the morning with no one else in the building. Compartmentation is the recurring finding, since cable routes between rooms and risers are opened repeatedly and rarely reinstated to the original detail. Where your people work inside data halls, meet-me rooms and plant spaces, the fuller picture sits on our data centre health and safety page.
How we help
Built around your operation
We work with the operator, the tower owner and the contractor, which matters in a sector where those are three different companies with one shared structure.
- Work at height and rescue plan review for masts, monopoles and rooftop sites, covering anchorage certification, structural adequacy before loading, wind speed stop thresholds and dropped object exclusion zones.
- Rope access method review against the IRATA code of practice and the Work at Height Regulations 2005, including supervision and rescue capability on site.
- Electromagnetic field risk assessment under CEMFAW 2016, covering compliance boundaries, power down and down-tilt permits with the network operations centre, personal RF monitoring and the multi-operator control gap.
- Confined space safe systems of work for chambers, footway boxes and ducts, with atmospheric testing, forced ventilation and tripod retrieval, delivered through our confined space safety service.
- Lone worker arrangements including check in and escalation, man down alarms, journey management and a defined overdue worker response.
- Street works safety audits against the statutory code and Chapter 8, with particular attention to pedestrian and step free routing.
- DSEAR assessment and hazardous area classification for battery rooms, supported by our DSEAR risk assessment service.
- Contractor and supply chain assurance so the competence trail between licensee, tower owner and climbing team is documented rather than assumed.
Why AL23 Safety
Sector-aware support that gets used
Accountable
If your rescue plan relies on the fire and rescue service reaching a suspended climber in time, we say so in writing. Suspension trauma does not wait for an appliance.
Practical, not just compliant
We write method statements that a two-person team can actually follow at a cabinet at midnight, not documents that assume a supervisor and a welfare unit.
One team, three disciplines
Health and safety, fire safety and fire engineering in-house. The person assessing hydrogen in the battery room sits with the person assessing the suppression system that protects it.
Nationwide
We support network operators, infrastructure contractors and technology businesses across the UK.
Get in touch
Tell us what your teams actually do
Send us the asset types, the work your people carry out and how much of it is subcontracted. We will tell you where the exposure sits and what to fix first.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usNo. IRATA certification demonstrates that the individual technician has been trained and assessed. The legal duty under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 stays with the employer, covering planning, supervision, equipment inspection and rescue. A site with three carded technicians and no rescue plan is still in breach.
Yes. Public exposure guidance and the Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016 are separate regimes. The occupational duty requires you to assess exposure, compare it against the action levels and exposure limit values and act where they are exceeded. It also requires you to identify employees at particular risk, including expectant mothers and anyone with an implanted medical device.
It is where there is a reasonably foreseeable specified risk. In practice that means oxygen deficiency from rusting ironwork, gas ingress from an adjacent main, sewer gases, water ingress or fumes from hot works. The test is the risk, not the size of the opening. The answer has to be recorded rather than assumed either way.
It depends on how many asset types you touch and how much of the work is subcontracted. A single review of climbing and rescue arrangements is project work. An estate with masts, chambers, street works and power rooms is better served by a retained arrangement so the assessments and the contractor assurance stay current. Our Core retainer starts at £250 per month, with ad hoc work at £95 per hour or £695 per day plus VAT.
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