Health Surveillance in London
Health surveillance for London employers in construction, rail and infrastructure, food production, facilities management and logistics. SEQOHS-accredited hearing, lung, skin and vibration checks, onsite at your project or premises.
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Health Surveillance for London Employers
London has more live construction and infrastructure work than anywhere else in the UK, from tower cores in the City and Canary Wharf to rail and tunnelling work and the HS2 sites at Old Oak Common and Euston. Behind that sit large industrial areas few visitors see: the food factories and distribution centres of Park Royal, the warehousing of the Lea Valley and Thames Gateway, and the round-the-clock maintenance that keeps transport, utilities and buildings running.
Many of those workers are exposed to silica dust, diesel exhaust, noise, vibration or skin irritants, and when a risk assessment shows a hazard that can cause a detectable condition, health surveillance is a legal requirement. Sigma Health provides SEQOHS-accredited programmes, overseen by GMC-registered occupational health doctors, with testing carried out onsite so London teams lose as little time as possible to travel.
Workplace Health Checks in London
Who Needs Health Surveillance?
London has more live construction than anywhere in the UK, and silica, cement, noise and vibration are present on almost every site. Typical checks are spirometry for silica dust, skin checks for cement and resins, audiometry for noise and HAVS assessments for vibrating tools, run onsite so crews are not sent off the job.
Plant operators in London face engine noise and vibration in a safety-critical role. Pairing audiometry with a safety critical medical covers surveillance and fitness for the role in a single appointment.
Breakers, compactors and disc cutters put groundworkers among the workers most at risk of hand-arm vibration syndrome. We follow the HSE tiered approach for HAVS and add lung function tests where cutting creates silica dust.
Marshals must hear warnings and judge moving vehicles reliably. Hearing and vision are checked as part of a fitness-for-task assessment, with audiometry for marshals who also work in noisy areas.
Confined space work falls under the Confined Spaces Regulations 1997, and anyone using breathing apparatus must be fit to wear it. Our confined space medical covers heart and lung fitness, including spirometry.
Licensed asbestos workers need a medical every two years from an HSE-appointed doctor; notifiable non-licensed work needs one at least every three years. See our asbestos medicals.
Distribution centres in Park Royal, the Lea Valley and the Thames Gateway run noisy sortation systems, FLTs and 24-hour shifts. We provide audiometry where noise exceeds the action values, fitness assessments for drivers and FLT operators, and drug and alcohol testing for safety-sensitive roles.
London manufacturing is concentrated in food production around Park Royal and in specialist engineering and print businesses across the outer boroughs. That usually means a mix of skin surveillance, spirometry with respiratory questionnaires, hearing checks and, where a substance can be measured in the body, biological monitoring.
Baseline checks for anyone joining an exposed role in London give you a reference point for every later result, and protect you if a claim relates to damage that began before they joined. We often run them with pre-placement medicals.
Display screen users are entitled to an eye test on request under the DSE Regulations. It is not health surveillance in the legal sense, but we can add vision screening for office staff to a site visit.
Construction, Rail and Infrastructure Projects
On London projects the biggest risk is usually respirable crystalline silica, created by cutting, drilling and breaking concrete, brick and stone, and in tunnelling. Exposed workers need spirometry and a respiratory questionnaire. Breakers, drills and disc cutters bring hand-arm vibration, assessed with the HSE tiered HAVS process, and piling, plant and track work bring noise covered by audiometry. Wet cement and resins cause dermatitis, so skin checks are standard.
Rail and track workers often need surveillance combined with safety-critical fitness: we can carry out PTS medicals, safety critical medicals and drug and alcohol testing in the same session. Principal contractors on major London schemes increasingly ask subcontractors for evidence of health surveillance before they start on site, and our reports are built to answer that request.
Which Checks London Workforces Need
| Hazard | Check | Typical frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Silica dust from cutting, drilling, breaking and tunnelling | Spirometry and respiratory questionnaire | Baseline, then at least annually |
| Breakers, drills, disc cutters and compactors | HAVS tiered assessment | Baseline, then an annual questionnaire |
| Noise from piling, plant, track work and production lines | Audiometry | Baseline, yearly for two years, then every three years if stable |
| Wet cement, resins, cleaning chemicals and wet work | Skin surveillance | Baseline, regular responsible-person checks, annual clinical review |
| Flour and food dusts in Park Royal and other food plants | Respiratory questionnaire and spirometry | Baseline, closer follow-up in the first year, then annually |
| Asbestos in refurbishment and demolition | Asbestos medical | Every 2 years (licensed) or 3 years (notifiable non-licensed) |
Food Production, Facilities and Logistics
Park Royal is one of London’s biggest food manufacturing hubs, where flour and ingredient dusts, wet work and refrigeration noise all need monitoring. Facilities management, cleaning and catering teams across the capital handle detergents and disinfectants and spend hours in wet work, which makes skin surveillance the most common requirement. Distribution centres in the Lea Valley, along the North Circular and in the Thames Gateway combine noise, FLT work and shift patterns.
How We Work in London
We test onsite at your project, depot or premises, planned around shift and possession times, and give each employee an outcome and your team a summary report after every visit. Medical details stay confidential unless the employee consents, and health records are kept to COSHH standards (40 years).
Book Health Surveillance in London
Tell us about your project or site, the number of people and the hazards involved, and we will put together a health surveillance programme and quote for your London workforce. Call 0330 133 6470 or email info@sigmahealth.co.uk.
FAQs - Health Surveillance in London
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Occupational Health Across London and the South East
Our mobile teams work across all London boroughs and into the Home Counties, testing onsite at projects and premises or arranging clinic appointments for smaller teams.
Employers with sites in other parts of the UK can run one programme across every location, keeping records, recall dates and reports in one place.
Get In Touch
Request a Quote London Health Surveillance
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