Window Cleaning Industry: Workplace Safety

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

On 6 April last year, my constituent Jason Knight was cleaning the last window of the home of a regular customer in Westbury when he was electrocuted by 33,000 V from an overhead cable. He was blown 7 feet across the garden, waking up on a patch of scorched grass with catastrophic injuries. Found by his customer, he was airlifted to hospital in Bristol in 12 minutes and placed in a coma. He woke up surrounded by his distraught family. He was very lucky to survive.

Jason was left with life-changing injuries. He has lost his left arm below the elbow, several toes, and a great deal of leg musculature. He has undergone over 20 sets of surgical intervention, suffered severe burns all over his body, and can walk or stand only with the utmost difficulty. Now he is losing his sight as a delayed effect of the electrocution. He is just 34 years old with three small children. He had started his own business that was growing and he was providing for his young family. He is a real doer, but his injuries are such that it is going to be extremely difficult for him to work again.

What happened was this: 33,000 V leapt, without physical contact, about 2 metres from an overhead power cable to Jason’s telescopic water-fed cleaning pole. The Health and Safety Executive made inquiries, of course, but concluded there was no breach of regulations that warranted investigation. Indeed, an HSE spokesperson told the BBC that the overhead powerlines involved in this incident met national safety standards. In the UK, we tolerate high tension power cables that are slung surprisingly close to commercial and residential buildings.

However, it was not the overhead powerlines that failed Jason; it was the cleaning pole. As Jason said to his father, John, shortly before he was taken to theatre to have his forearm amputated, “I don’t understand, Dad—I bought an insulated pole.” It should not have mattered that he was close to a power line, because the pole should have been fully insulated, but it was not. Jason was using a telescopic pole that could extend and retract. The handle section at the bottom was insulated, but the extended section was not. He was electrocuted when he reached up to retract the extended section.

I have to say that before Jason came to see me, I knew very little about window cleaning. As he and John recounted the story, I assumed that it was the water from the water-fed pole that was the culprit, since tap water, being impure, conducts electricity perfectly well. Jason and his dad put me right: window cleaners, including Jason that day, use pure water, or what is often called “zero water.” This kind of water has been filtered to remove all or nearly all dissolved solids, so that it leaves no watermarks on windows after cleaning. Ordinary tap water does not have that property. At that moment, I realised why my own attempts at window cleaning at home invariably left the glass looking worse. The crucial point is this: pure water is non-conductive, so the water in Jason’s pole was not the culprit. What caused this accident was inadequate insulation in a tool designed to be used at height, even in proximity to overhead power lines.

This is not a new, unforeseeable risk. The first water-fed poles, developed in the United States in the 1950s, were made entirely of aluminium. When window cleaners started to be electrocuted, the manufacturers simply slapped on some warning labels. At that time, the greatest hazard to window cleaners in Britain was falling off ladders, but when pole technology crossed the pond in the 1990s, its safety issues came with it. One British manufacturer, Craig Mawlam, head of Ionic Systems in Swindon—whose expertise I have drawn on extensively—recognised that danger early. He sought out non-conductive materials, developing composite glass-fibre and carbon-fibre poles. He prioritised insulation in the handle, and worked with the Health and Safety Executive to introduce training and guidance as the industry moved away from ladders and towards working from terra firma. Critically, however, this was voluntary, not required. There was, and remains, no mandatory British standard governing the electrical insulation of telescopic cleaning poles.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman for raising this subject. I was sitting here and thinking to myself that years ago I lived on a farm, and years ago farmers were not aware of the dangers of telescopic hydraulic lifts touching cables, just as they were not aware of the dangers of falling off roofs. A campaign was started to ensure that farmers took greater care of themselves by following health and safety regulations. My sympathies, concerns and thoughts are with his constituent as he deals with the challenges of the life he is now leading. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that a campaign might now be necessary to protect those who could be affected by workplace safety issues—such as those who use water-fed poles in the window cleaning industry—like the campaign to protect the farmers many years ago? Today, farms are very safety-conscious.

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, quite right. Occupations that are not predictable are particularly dangerous. Agriculture is clearly one, as is construction, and window cleaning is plainly another. The window cleaning industry, as its association will say, is a particular issue, because many in the industry are essentially start-ups. They are often one-man bands—they are usually men—and they do not necessarily undergo training. They are probably not aware of the need for it. That is why it is so important to make the changes that I am suggesting we make, and to engineer out the problem so that people are not exposed to the hazards that I have mentioned and to which, sadly, Jason has fallen victim.

The omission of any recognition of the issue in British standards matters now more than ever, because the poles that I have described are no longer specialist equipment; they are used everywhere. They are used on residential streets beneath overhead cables; they are used near rail infrastructure; they are used in airports, hospitals, schools and industrial sites. They are used not just for window cleaning but, increasingly, for solar panel cleaning, gutter clearing, roof treatment, camera inspections, and building maintenance. They are available online relatively inexpensively, and they are available for use by amateurs and DIY-ers. Moreover, they are increasingly imported cheaply from overseas, especially from China, meeting no enforceable UK electrical safety standards at all.

In 2011, a British standard was published that could have changed everything: BS 8020. This standard governs insulating hand tools used near live electrical conductors up to 1,000 V. It requires rigorous construction standards. It requires batch testing at 10,000 V, providing a 10:1 safety margin. It mandates clear marking and verification. As an example, it covers narrow bladed shovels that might be used close to where underground cables could be—they are the ones sold at builders’ merchants or DIY shops, typically with a yellow or orange plastic section in the shaft or handle. Some pole manufacturers chose to apply BS 8020 to the handle section of their poles. Since 2017, at least one UK supplier has done so as a matter of course: Ionic Systems in Swindon, Wiltshire. But here lies the problem: BS 8020 is not mandatory for cleaning poles, and it does not require insulation of the section immediately above the handle. That is why Jason Knight was injured.

The UK remained free of fatal water-fed pole electrocutions until 2022. In that single year, two window cleaners were killed while working at residential properties. In 2024, Jason was very lucky to survive. Window cleaners now account for a significant proportion of overhead powerline electrocutions, yet unlike in agriculture, construction or scaffolding, there is no targeted awareness campaign, no mandatory training requirement and no enforced equipment standards for this trade. That is why I have brought this matter to the House.

The Federation of Window Cleaners, the Health and Safety Executive, the British Standards Institute and representatives of the energy networks have begun discussions on what to do. Some suppliers have engaged constructively, but others have refused entirely. The manufacturer of the pole that Jason was using when he was electrocuted claims that its products are “tested to 5,000 V”, without reference to any recognised standard. That figure is arbitrary; it is meaningless without methodology, certification, or context. A pole tested informally to 5,000 V may be vastly less safe than one certified to British standard 8020 to 1,000 V but good for 10,000 V with a 10:1 safety margin, yet the higher number sounds more reassuring to a sole trader or DIY-er choosing equipment online. That is exactly why British standards exist, and why we need one for telescopic water-fed poles.

This debate is not about banning water-fed poles. They have made the industry safer, because they have reduced the need to use ladders and to work at height. Nor is it about blaming workers, many of whom are sole traders operating on tight margins, without access to formal training or industry bodies. This debate is about designing danger out of tools in the first place, not just warning people to be careful while continuing to sell sub-optimal equipment.

The remedy is simple, proportionate, cheap and immediately available. First, British standard 8020 should be amended or extended to cover telescopic cleaning poles explicitly, and to require that both the handle and the first telescopic section above it meet the insulation standard and are marked accordingly. That single change would ensure that an operator’s hands remain on verifiably insulated material throughout normal raising, lowering and operation of the pole. It would create a safe clearance of 3 metres to 4 metres in most real-world situations.

Secondly, compliance with the standard should be mandatory, whether through regulation, conditions attached to limited liability insurance, or the procurement requirements imposed by major building occupiers. It is worth admitting that products would become about 70 grams heavier and slightly less rigid, but that is completely tolerable. On the flip side, glass-fibre insulation is cheaper than the carbon fibre it would replace.

I am pleased to say that the British Standards Institution, after a bit of encouragement, has seen the merit of the case. Its director general, Scott Steedman, kindly wrote to me earlier this month to say that he is working up proposals that will determine if there will be an amendment to the relevant British standards, drawing from the guidance published by the British Window Cleaning Academy. However, I remain concerned that the right British standard is amended. BS 8020 is an equipment-based British standard. It appears to me to be the more appropriate target, rather than the BSI’s current suggestion, which is BS 8213, a British standard which deals largely with safe systems of work. It could be that both standards need to be amended. Nevertheless, Mr Steedman’s news is most welcome, as is his assurance that a draft of the proposed changes will be published for public consultation in accordance with the BSI’s normal practice.

Britain has led the world in industrial safety by setting clear, enforceable standards. Given British manufacturers’ global exports, a UK standard in this could well become an international benchmark, saving lives, limbs and livelihoods across the world. Jason Knight, his father John and Craig Mawlam are not campaigners by choice. They have become campaigners because they do not want what happened to Jason to happen to others, and I pay tribute to them today. We cannot accept a system in which warning labels are seen as a substitute for a simple engineering solution that removes risk at source. I feel sure that the Minister will agree with all this, and I hope he will use his good offices to encourage the BSI and the HSE to bring forward the changes I have outlined as quickly as possible.