Insulating gloves, safety boots, arc flash PPE, insulated hand tools, eye protection and head protection — the standards each must meet, when each is required, and where the legal duties sit.
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Written and reviewed by Andrew Moore, founder of Elec-Mate, against BS 7671:2018+A4:2026, IET Guidance Note 3 and the IET On-Site Guide.
The short answer
The core PPE for an electrician is: safety boots to BS EN ISO 20345 (S1P or S3), safety glasses or an arc-rated face shield, flame-resistant or arc-rated clothing, insulating gloves to BS EN 60903 rated for the working voltage wherever contact with a live conductor is foreseeable, insulated hand tools to BS EN 60900, and head protection on site. Test instruments and leads must meet HSE Guidance Note GS 38. PPE is the last line of defence: under the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 you must work dead wherever reasonably practicable, and under the PPE at Work Regulations 1992 (as amended in 2022) the employer provides suitable PPE free of charge.
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01 · Safety Guide
Every electrician needs the same eight items. The standard in the middle column is what to look for on the product marking — if it is not marked, it has not been tested.
| Item | Standard | When you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Safety boots | BS EN ISO 20345 (S1P or S3) | Every site. S3 for outdoor and wet work |
| Eye protection | BS EN 166 | Drilling, chasing, cutting, and any work near live parts |
| Insulating gloves | BS EN 60903, class matched to the voltage | Whenever contact with a live conductor is foreseeable |
| Insulated hand tools | BS EN 60900 — 1,000 V AC / 1,500 V DC | All work on or near live conductors |
| Voltage indicator and proving unit | HSE Guidance Note GS 38 | Every safe isolation, on every job |
| Arc-rated clothing and face shield | BS EN IEC 61482 series | Work on or near energised switchgear and boards |
| Head protection | BS EN 397 helmet, or BS EN 812 bump cap | Construction sites, plant rooms, lofts and floor voids |
| High-visibility clothing | BS EN ISO 20471 | Site, roadside and traffic-managed areas |
Two separate pieces of law sit behind that list. The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, as amended in 2022, govern who provides PPE and how it is maintained. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 govern whether you may work live at all. Both apply at the same time, and neither one lets PPE stand in for safe isolation.
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02 · Safety Guide
Personal Protective Equipment is the last line of defence in the hierarchy of control. It does not eliminate or reduce the hazard itself — it protects the individual from the consequences of exposure to a hazard that has not been fully controlled by other means. For electricians, that means PPE protects you when safe isolation, lock off procedures, engineered barriers and safe systems of work are either not possible or have failed.
Schedule 1 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 sets out the general principles of prevention: avoid the risk, combat it at source, replace the dangerous with the less dangerous, and give collective protective measures priority over individual protective measures. In everyday practice that is applied as eliminate, substitute, engineering controls, administrative controls, then PPE. The primary control for electric shock is safe isolation — making the circuit dead and proving it dead. Insulating gloves and face protection are the backup for when something goes wrong.
There are situations where PPE cannot be designed out. Working near energised equipment even when the circuit in front of you is isolated, live testing, fault response, and work in environments with other hazards present all require it. BS 7671 Regulation 641.4 requires that precautions be taken to avoid danger to persons and livestock, and damage to property and installed equipment, during inspection and testing. The risk assessment for each job should name exactly which PPE those precautions amount to.
03 · Safety Guide
Insulating gloves are the most critical piece of PPE an electrician carries. BS EN 60903 classes them by maximum working voltage — pick the class that covers the highest voltage you could contact, not the one that covers the job you think you are doing.
| Class | Max working voltage (AC) | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Class 00 | 500 V | Minimum for 230 V single-phase work. Thinner and more dexterous than the higher classes — suitable for domestic and light commercial work |
| Class 0 | 1,000 V | Covers 400 V three-phase as well as 230 V, so one pair does distribution board work. The usual choice for UK installation work |
| Class 1 | 7,500 V | Medium-voltage equipment; HV authorised persons |
| Class 2 | 17,000 V | HV substation work. Thicker and less dexterous — leather over-gloves essential |
| Class 3 | 26,500 V | Specialist HV distribution network work |
| Class 4 | 36,000 V | Specialist HV transmission and distribution network work |
Before each use, inspect gloves for cuts, tears, punctures, chemical contamination and UV degradation, then air-test them by rolling the cuff to trap air inside and listening and feeling for leaks. Never use a damaged pair. Store them flat or in a glove bag, in a cool dark place away from sharp objects, oils and solvents — not folded into a tool bag. Electrical retesting by an accredited laboratory should be carried out at intervals not exceeding six months, whatever the class.
04 · Safety Guide
PPE does not make live work lawful. Regulation 14 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 permits work on or near a live conductor only where all three of the following hold: it is unreasonable in all the circumstances for the conductor to be dead; it is reasonable in all the circumstances to work on or near it while live; and suitable precautions — including, where necessary, the provision of suitable protective equipment — are taken to prevent injury. All three, not any one.
Regulation 16 then requires that no person is engaged in a work activity where technical knowledge or experience is needed to prevent danger unless they possess it, or are under an appropriate degree of supervision. BS 7671 refers to the same regulation, and to HSE publication HSR25 for guidance on it.
Live testing is the common case: you cannot measure a supply voltage or take a live impedance reading on a dead circuit. That is exactly the situation Regulation 14 contemplates — and exactly why the test leads themselves have to meet GS 38 rather than being an afterthought.
05 · Safety Guide
Safety boots protect your feet from dropped tools, heavy equipment and standing on cable clips and screws. The markings on the tongue label are what tell you what a pair actually does.
| Marking | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| S1P | The practical minimum for electrical work: 200 joule toe cap, antistatic sole, energy-absorbing seat region and midsole penetration protection |
| S3 | Adds water resistance and a cleated outsole — the all-round choice if you work across domestic, commercial and construction sites |
| Composite vs steel toe cap | Both meet the 200 joule requirement. Composite is lighter and non-conductive, which is why most electricians prefer it |
| EH-rated soles | An ASTM (American) marking, not a BS EN one: tested to withstand 18,000 V under dry conditions as secondary protection only |
In BS EN ISO 20345 the letter E stands for energy absorption of the seat region — the heel — and the letter A for antistatic. Neither is electrical shock protection. The antistatic property is there to dissipate static charge, and it deliberately does not give you a high-resistance path to earth. No boot marking is a substitute for safe isolation.
Replace boots when the sole is worn, the toe cap is exposed or the waterproofing has failed. Daily site use typically gets you six to twelve months out of a pair.
06 · Safety Guide
Eye injuries are among the most common workplace injuries for electricians. Flying debris from drilling, chasing and cutting; dust from lofts and floor voids; chemical splashes; and the intense light and molten metal of an arc flash all cause serious eye damage.
| Type | Standard | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Safety glasses | BS EN 166 | General electrical work. Must have side shields. Anti-fog coating matters in warm or humid spaces — glasses pushed onto a forehead protect nothing |
| Safety goggles | BS EN 166 | Angle grinders, chop saws and dusty environments — the sealed fit keeps out fine particles and liquid splash |
| Arc-rated face shield | BS EN IEC 61482 series | Work on or near energised switchgear and distribution boards, rated to the value the arc flash risk assessment calls for |
An arc-rated shield is rated by arc thermal performance value (ATPV) or, in the newer European test reporting, by ELIM. Match it to the incident energy from the arc flash risk assessment rather than buying by category label alone. Clean lenses daily and replace them once scratched or pitted — scratched lenses cause the eye strain that makes people take them off. Keep a spare pair in the bag.
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07 · Safety Guide
Arc flash PPE is rated by the incident energy it can withstand, in calories per square centimetre (cal/cm²). The four numbered categories come from NFPA 70E, a US standard with no statutory force in Great Britain, but they are widely used here as shorthand for specifying kit. In the UK and Europe the garments themselves are tested to the BS EN IEC 61482 series.
| Category | Minimum arc rating | Clothing and equipment |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 cal/cm² | Arc-rated long-sleeve shirt and trousers or coverall, arc-rated face shield or hood, hard hat, safety glasses, hearing protection, heavy-duty leather gloves and leather footwear |
| 2 | 8 cal/cm² | As Category 1, plus an arc-rated balaclava with the face shield (or an arc flash hood), and insulating gloves with leather protectors where shock is also a risk |
| 3 | 25 cal/cm² | Arc flash suit and arc-rated hood, arc-rated gloves, hard hat, safety glasses, hearing protection and leather footwear |
| 4 | 40 cal/cm² | Multi-layer arc flash suit and hood, arc-rated gloves, hard hat, safety glasses, hearing protection and leather footwear |
As a working rule for UK installation work, Category 2 is a sensible floor for anything on or near an energised distribution board, and Category 3 or above for main switchboards and switchgear with high available fault energy. That is practice guidance, not a legal threshold: the correct category is whatever the arc flash risk assessment gives for the incident energy at the working distance for that specific equipment. Do not guess — the gap between Category 1 and Category 4 is the gap between a survivable injury and a fatal one.
BS 7671:2018+A4:2026 Regulation 712.410.101 requires that electrical equipment on the DC side shall be considered to be energised, even when the AC side is disconnected from the grid or when the inverter is disconnected from the DC side. Strings generate voltage in daylight regardless of what you have switched on the AC side, so there is no safe isolation equivalent for DC-side conductors, combiner boxes or string connections during daylight. BS 7671 does not itself specify PPE — but because the DC side must be treated as live, Regulation 14 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 applies, which in practice means insulating gloves rated for the string voltage and insulated hand tools. See the Solar PV installation certificate for the related documentation.
08 · Safety Guide
Insulated hand tools are designed and tested for work on or near live conductors. They are marked with the double-triangle symbol and rated 1,000 V AC (1,500 V DC). Every electrician should own a full set and reach for it whenever there is energised equipment in front of them.
Standard chrome vanadium tools with plain plastic or rubber grips are not insulated and must never stand in for insulated tools when working on or near live conductors. The grip on a standard tool is there for comfort, not for electrical protection.
HSE Guidance Note GS 38 sets the requirements for the test equipment you use to prove dead — finger barriers, shrouded connectors, minimal exposed probe tip and fused leads where the instrument manufacturer advises. Insulated tools protect you during work on live conductors; GS 38-compliant test equipment protects you during the proving-dead step that comes first. Both belong in the same safe system of work.
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Elec-Mate's site safety tools keep your PPE inspection records, tool and instrument calibration dates, and training certificates in one place, so nothing expires unnoticed.
09 · Safety Guide
Head protection depends on the environment. Construction sites, industrial premises and commercial refurbishment projects normally require a helmet. Domestic work in an occupied property usually does not, unless there is a specific risk of head injury.
| Type | Standard | Protects against |
|---|---|---|
| Industrial safety helmet | BS EN 397 | Falling objects and collision with fixed structures. 440 V AC electrical insulation is an optional marking under EN 397 — check the shell, do not assume |
| Electrically insulating helmet | BS EN 50365 | The dedicated standard for helmets used on low-voltage installations, where contact with a live conductor is foreseeable |
| Bump cap | BS EN 812 | Knocking your head on beams, pipes and joists. Lighter than a helmet, but it is not falling-object protection — useful in lofts and floor voids |
Helmets carry a moulded manufacture date inside the shell. Replace in line with the manufacturer’s stated service life — it varies by material and by maker, so read the user instructions rather than working to a rule of thumb. Replace immediately, whatever the date, after any impact, or if the shell is cracked, crazed, chalky, or has been exposed to solvents or prolonged sunlight.
10 · Safety Guide
PPE only protects you if it is in good condition and correctly fitted. Maintaining it is not optional — it is a duty under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, as amended in 2022.
11 · Safety Guide
The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 set out who must provide, maintain and use PPE. They were amended by the Personal Protective Equipment at Work (Amendment) Regulations 2022, in force from 6 April 2022 — the amendment extended the duties to limb (b) workers rather than replacing the 1992 Regulations.
The statutory basis for electrical PPE is not the PPE Regulations alone. Regulation 14 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 prohibits work on or near live conductors unless it is unreasonable to work dead, reasonable to work live, and suitable precautions — including suitable protective equipment — are taken. Regulation 16 requires the person doing the work to have the necessary technical knowledge or experience, or to be under an appropriate degree of supervision. The PPE Regulations govern provision, maintenance and training; the Electricity at Work Regulations govern whether live work is permissible at all. HSE publication HSR25 is the guidance on applying them, and BS 7671 itself points readers to it.
Limb (b) workers are people who are not employees but work under a contract to personally perform work — many agency workers, freelance electricians and subcontractors fall into this group. If you engage them, you provide their PPE on the same basis as for employees.
Elec-Mate training courses including manual handling, PASMA, IPAF and working at height cover when and how to use each type of PPE correctly.
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Generate a risk assessment and method statement with Elec-Mate's AI Health and Safety agent and the PPE for each activity is set out alongside the hazards and controls, ready to sign and send.
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