Your employer's duties are set out in the The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. These Regulations require your employer to apply control measures to prevent, or reduce, the risk of injury to you from manual handling of loads.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has deliberately designed the approach your employer should take, in three stages:
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) also publishes advice on the sort of weights that are likely to cause injury.
The HSE guidance says that the weights shown in the diagrams are not meant to be interpreted as 'safe limits'. You may still be injured lifting lighter loads if other 'risk factors' are present, eg an awkward lifting position, or you individual capability.
When you are handling the kinds of weights shown in the figures, then a risk assessment is likely to be needed. The figures assume that you are lifting easily held, compact loads in ideal conditions.
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