Winter safety checklist: A practical guide for yards, warehouses, and outdoor workers

Health and safety requirements change with the seasons – and winter brings a wave of additional compliance considerations. Vehicles need extra time and space to stop, visibility drops just as your yard is busiest, and walkways that were safe in September can become slippery in cold, wet weather. 

Lower temperatures should signal a reassessment of your working environment, protecting your people and premises from winter safety concerns – from gritting strategies to suitable PPE. 

This checklist helps you stay ahead of cold weather compliance issues, preventing accidents and legal action with targeted site maintenance tips. Use it as a quick refresher on winter compliance or a walk-round tool to ramp up safety measures when the mercury falls. 

How to use this checklist:

• Work through the list section by section with your site plan to hand. 
• Prioritise your highest-risk areas first – focusing on yards, vehicle routes, and customer areas. 
• Transform your findings into clear actions with an owner and a deadline.

Speak to your Opus Safety consultant for further answers, advice, and support.

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1. Yard, traffic management, and gritting

Your yard and external areas are usually where winter bites first – especially around vehicle routes and busy walkways.

• Check your site plan and identify high-risk areas, including yards, loading bays, busy walkways, and vehicle routes.
• Decide which areas will be kept open and gritted and which will be clearly marked as no-go zones.
• Confirm you have enough grit on site for the season and know where it is stored.
• Agree who is responsible for gritting and when. For example, the first person on site checks conditions and takes action on gritting and salting. 
• Ensure your gritting plan covers less-frequent delivery routes, such as weekly deliveries and side entrances.
• Walk the site in cold weather to assess whether a new delivery driver knows where to go safely. 
• Check for potholes and surface damage caused by freeze–thaw activity. Plan repairs to minimise trip hazards.

2. Vehicles, lift trucks, and pedestrian segregation

When surfaces are wet, icy, or covered in leaves, minor vehicle mistakes can have considerable consequences.

• Remind drivers that stopping distances increase in ice, frost, and standing water.
• Reinforce people versus plant segregation rules in yards and warehouses.
• Encourage managers to physically sit in lift trucks and yard vehicles and determine whether visibility is genuinely adequate. 
• Make sure all windscreens and windows are fully cleared, not just a ‘porthole’ to see through.
• Review traffic routes and one-way systems to minimise reversing and blind spots in low light.

3. Lone working and protecting your gritting team 

It's often the first person on site who faces the highest risk – working alone, in the dark, on untreated ground.

• Arrange for multiple staff to arrive on site wherever possible.
• Ensure that people gritting your site have appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), including suitable safety footwear, hi-vis clothing, and insulated, waterproof gloves.
• Brief staff that preventing the gritter from becoming the casualty is a specific management responsibility.

4. DIY fixes, work at height, and dynamic risk assessment

Bad weather exposes weaknesses in roofs, gutters, and pipework – but rushed ‘DIY fixes’ can create bigger problems than the damage itself.

• Make it clear that staff must not improvise DIY fixes for burst pipes, damaged fencing, roofs, or gutters.
• Implement a simple decision tree:
  
  • Can this be done safely in-house?
  • Do we need a competent contractor?
  • Should the area be closed or barriered off while we wait?
• Reinforce that ladders and fragile roofs are strictly controlled (or prohibited) during bad weather.
• Encourage managers and supervisors to pause, step back, and consciously assess risks before acting.

5. Visibility, lighting, and hi-vis clothing

Shorter days and poor weather mean your usual lighting may no longer be enough. Stepping up lighting provision and committing to high-quality hi-vis clothing can save lives. 

• Carry out a ‘dark site walk’ at dusk – around 3.30-4.30pm in winter – to identify poor visibility areas.
• Check yard and car park lighting. Are there dark patches, failed lamps, or badly lit pedestrian routes?
• Audit hi-vis garments. Are they dirty, damaged, or faded – especially the reflective strips?
• Review whether your hi-vis colours work in your environment. For example, black hi-vis may be harder to see against dark vehicles than yellow or orange.
• Set a simple rule for when hi-vis must be worn, such as in all external areas or operational zones. 

6. Clothing, gloves, and cold weather welfare 

Temperature plays an essential part in team safety, productivity, and wellbeing. If your workers are too cold to think and move properly, mistakes become inevitable – long before hypothermia sets in.

• Provide guidance on layering clothing so staff can stay warm without losing mobility.
• Establish a glove policy with suitable options for:
  
  • Wintry/cold conditions
  • Wet work
  • Dry handling tasks
• Give staff choice where possible so they’re more likely to wear PPE correctly.
• Identify workers who struggle more with the cold and consider reasonable adjustments, such as heated gilets and heated gloves.

7. Parking, customer behaviour, and site discipline

Customers and staff naturally take shortcuts and gravitate to entrances when it’s cold, wet, or dark. Take steps to boost safety in every situation. 

• Review customer and staff parking arrangements in bad weather. Are people tempted to park closer to entrances?
• Make sure line marking and signage are clear and visible in winter conditions.
• Empower staff to challenge unsafe parking or shortcuts, including running across the yard without hi-vis because it’s raining.

8. Access, gates, and de-icing 

Frozen locks and gates are a classic trigger for unsafe climbing and workarounds on cold mornings. 

• Ensure keyholders and first-on-site staff have de-icer in their vehicles.

• Brief staff to never climb fences, gates, or structures to gain access when locks or gates are frozen.
• Check access control points for slip risks, including frozen puddles, slopes, and metal steps.

9. Footwear and slip prevention

Even the strongest gritting plan can’t succeed if staff wear boots that aren’t cold weather ready.

• Carry out a boot check. Ask staff to look at the tread on their safety footwear and replace worn-out boots.
• Decide whether specific winter-grip footwear is needed for certain tasks or areas.
• Include footwear in routine PPE inspections and toolbox talks during winter.

10. Breaks, warm-up time, and cold stress

Cold affects judgement, reaction times, and grip long before workers realise they’re genuinely unwell.

• Brief teams on the signs and symptoms of cold stress, including deep chill, aches, numbness, confusion, and reduced dexterity.
• If work is mainly outdoors, consider shorter, more frequent warm-up breaks instead of a set schedule of extended breaks. 
• Provide access to warm rest zones and hot drinks close to work areas.
• Encourage staff to speak up if they’re too cold rather than ‘soldiering on’.

11. Heating, fan heaters, and electrical safety

Portable heaters can solve one problem and create another – from overloaded sockets to hidden fire risks.

• Identify where portable heaters are in use, such as offices, portable cabins, and cold corners.
• Ban or strictly control daisy-chaining extension leads for high-load heaters.
• Ensure heaters are plugged directly into wall sockets wherever possible.
• Include heaters in PAT testing or visual checks and confirm they’re switched off at night.
• Make it clear that clothing and PPE must not be dried on top of heaters.

12. Fire risks: Skips, waste, and fireworks

Colder weather doesn’t remove fire risk – and fireworks season can add ignition sources in unexpected places.

• Keep skips and external bins lidded or covered where possible.
• Avoid storing excess pallets or combustible waste close to buildings or fences.
• Include a morning walk-round to check for signs of fireworks or embers in skips, pallets, or yard areas.
• Make sure external waste collections are frequent enough to prevent overflowing bins.

13. Drainage, flooding, and ice control

Blocked drains and poor run-off can quickly turn into sheets of ice and serious slip hazards.

• Clear leaves and debris from drains, gullies, and gutters before and during harsh weather.
• Identify areas that regularly puddle and include them in your gritting and inspection plan.
• Check that downpipes and drainage aren’t discharging across walkways or vehicle routes where water will freeze.

14. Wind, roofs, signage, and contractor management

High winds can loosen signage and building elements – but the real risk often comes from post-incident behaviour. 

• Inspect signage, roof sheets, tiles, and cladding for damage after high winds.
• Document a clear process:
  
  • Who staff call if they find damage
  • Who decides whether areas are barriered off
  • How and when contractors are called in
• Emphasise that signs can stay down for a few days if necessary. Lack of signage is better than unsafe work at height.

15. Stock, storage, and frozen goods

Some products become brittle, slippery, or simply unworkable when temperatures dip – which can create hidden handling risks. 

• Review outdoor stock – such as drainage products, PVC, compost, and landscaping materials – for freezing and brittleness.
• Move fast-moving items into covered or indoor areas where possible, especially if they’re handled frequently.
• Check racking and storage points where water collects and freezes around stock picking locations.

16. Drying areas, spare kit, and changing facilities

Without a secure space to dry off and change, your team stays wet and cold – often taking risks to complete tasks quickly.

• Provide a safe place to dry wet PPE and clothing away from ignition sources.
• Encourage staff to bring spare socks, gloves, and base layers for mid-shift changes.
• Consider whether wellies or boots are more appropriate for specific outdoor tasks.

17. Local planning and weather monitoring

Effective winter safety relies on looking ahead – rather than reacting once conditions have deteriorated.

• Nominate a team member to check the weather forecast daily in winter and flag severe conditions.
• Build in five minutes of planning on particularly cold, wet, or windy mornings to decide:

• Which tasks go ahead
• Which tasks are postponed
• Which areas are closed or restricted

• Allow local site managers flexibility to pause non-essential work in extreme conditions.

Specialist support for winter safety 

While snow and ice are predictable, most winter workplace accidents aren’t. Our cold weather checklist is designed to prevent seasonal compliance problems, equipping your team to spot issues before they turn into incidents.

If you’d value a second pair of eyes on your site, the Opus team can support with a short winter readiness gap analysis focused on your yards, vehicle movements, and higher-risk areas. 

It’s a straightforward way to sense-check your current controls and prioritise practical actions to make a measurable difference.

Talk to an Opus Safety consultant on 0330 043 4015 or email hello@opus-safety.co.uk.

Watch the video

‍Opus Safety’s John Southall and Ian Hatherly recap your top seasonal safety priorities.