The Department of Health has published revised HBN guidance on the technical design and output specifications of windows and associated hardware.
A new Health Building Note, 00-10 Part D: Windows and associated hardware (www.tinyurl.com/jvrub3j), which supersedes HTM 55 – ‘Windows’, published in 1998, has been produced ‘to reflect changes in legislation, guidance, the structure of the NHS, and government policy and direction on health and social care’, and to help minimise the risk of patients falling from windows. Input was provided by the HSE, which says the content supplements its own guidance on risks to vulnerable members of the public falling from height from windows (www.hse.gov.uk/safetybulletins/ windowrestrictors.htm).
In November 2012, a Coroner’s Rule 43 letter to England’s Chief Medical Officer requested that action be taken to reduce the risk of such falls.
In July 2013 (HEJ – August 2013) Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust pleaded guilty at Southend Crown Court to breaching Regulation 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc., and was fined £15,000, with £15,000 in costs, after the court heard that in July 2010 a 66-year-old patient at the hospital had sustained serious injuries, and subsequently died, after falling through the window of a side room. The window was found to be fitted only with a single angle bracket restrictor, bent to one side, allowing it to be fully opened. An HSE investigation found arrangements for managing the risk of patients falling from windows were ‘inadequate’.
The latest guidance recognises that window restrictors tested to current British standards ‘may be inadequate in preventing a determined effort to force a window open beyond the 100 mm restriction’. With no current established performance standard, it recommends (dependent on risk assessments) testing loads on window restrictors used in healthcare premises using forces ‘in excess of those quoted in BS EN 14351’.
HBN 00-10 Part D says healthcare providers seeking to identify the risks of patients falling from windows should ‘take account of patient category and physical capability’, and stresses the importance of specifying the ‘correct type’ of restrictor, and ensuring restrictors and their fittings are ‘suitably robust to prevent vulnerable and determined adults from forcing them open beyond the 100 mm restriction’.
Preventative maintenance and monitoring schedules should include checking and inspection of restrictors, and, where they are found to be damaged, ‘defeated’, or defective, ‘questions should be asked about the significance of the findings and any wider implications’.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust
