1974 Health and Safety at Work act
This is the act which creates all health and safety at work legislation in the UK. For a full explanation of this legislation please click here. (opens in a new window).
The act applies to everyone although I've only shown part of the Employer's duty on the slide here. It is important to note that the HSE act is non prescriptive: i.e. it doesn't specify exactly how things should be done - only the results to be expected.
The detail of how things should be achieved are contained in various supporting documents which are introduced from time to time by the Health and Safety Executive.
Details of these documents and their relevance to manual handling can be found in the following slides.