Take Electrical Safety Seriously, this Farm Safety Week

Farmers are being urged to take extra care and stay safe around electrical equipment, this Farm Safety Week (17 – 21 July), to avoid the risk of further accidents.

Every year, our engineers and safety advisors are called to incidents in which farm vehicles have collided with overhead power lines.

In an incident at Church Village earlier this year, a farmer brought down part of the overhead electricity network after colliding with overhead power lines while driving farm machinery.

In another incident at Merthyr, a landowner dumped waste beneath overhead lines, raising ground levels and increasing the risk of farm vehicles or other long objects making contact with the lines.

Now we are adding our voice to a national campaign to raise awareness of farm safety issues and change attitudes to risk taking, to help keep farm workers safe.

Increases in the size of farm machinery also mean that the distance between the highest point of the machine and any nearby power lines is reducing, increasing the risk of accidents.

Eddie Cochrane, our Safety Advisor,  said: “The theme of this year’s Farm Safety Week campaign is ‘Farm Safety Starts with Me’. We want to make sure that farm workers of all ages have the safety knowledge they need to work in the right way and stay safe.

“Unfortunately, we are called to incidents every year in which farm vehicles have come into contact with overhead power lines, with potentially devastating consequences. It really is vital that farm workers ‘look out’ and ‘look up’ when working near electrical assets.”

Simple steps to stay safe include: 

• Always checking for power lines above you before starting work on the farm
• Storing objects, such as straw bales, away from overhead lines
• Avoiding building too close to 11kV lines and cables (plans can be obtained from National Grid or Linesearch);
• Never touching an overhead line or assuming it’s dead

If farm machinery hits a power line, farmers are urged to stay in the cab if it’s safe to do so, call our 105 emergency number and wait for help.

Farmers can use the ‘What3Words’ app to pinpoint the exact location of an incident, enabling network engineers to isolate the power in seconds using remote technology and helping to prevent any loss of life.

For more information about farm safety, please visit www.nationalgrid.co.uk/customers-and-community/health-safety/farming-safety