Since the cold weather hit, our staff have been complaining about the temperature in our offices, and also on the shop floor. What are our legal obligations?

Under health and safety legislation, you have to ensure the health, safety and welfare of your employees at work as far as is reasonably practicable. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1993 deal with working environments, with regulation 7 stipulating that "During working hours, the temperature in all workplaces inside buildings shall be reasonable." Of course, what is reasonable depends on the type of workplace and will be different for, say, an office compared with a cold store. Regulation 7 also provides that employers should provide a sufficient number of thermometers in a workplace so that workers can find out what the temperature actually is.

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