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Industry leaders have insisted a “comprehensive plan” is in place to help thousands of offshore workers at risk of losing their jobs because of their weight.
Trade body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) is bringing forward guidelines from November 2026 that will require all people working offshore to weigh less than 124 kilograms (19.5 kg).
This change is being made to ensure that people can be evacuated from the platform by helicopter if needed in an emergency.
Graham Skinner, OEUK’s health and safety manager, said the organization would be “working really hard” over the next 12 months to ensure affected staff can lose weight.
Noting that “the population in general is becoming overweight”, he said there are about 2,500 people employed abroad who are above the limit and “who will definitely have to lose weight”.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, he insisted: “Those people will be really supported by the offshore community and their employers during that time.”
Mr Skinner said there are an additional 2,500 offshore workers who are “below the weight limit but may require some additional support and weight management”, meaning “a total of 5,000 people who may be affected to some lesser or greater extent by the policy change”.
He said: “We have quite a comprehensive plan in place to manage people’s weight, so we’ll be working really hard over the next year to make sure people can lose weight over the weight limit.”
Asked whether people could lose their jobs if they fail to lose weight, Mr Skinner said it could happen in the “worst cases”.
He said: “employers It will be our duty to support our employees through this and try to find appropriate solutions, but in the worst case scenario this will be the case for some people.
Emphasizing that this is a “really important topic”, he said that “in general our population is becoming heavier, and that is reflected in the offshore population”.
He said: “We have been paying attention to this for years, but unfortunately the weight continues to increase.
“It increases year after year and if a worst-case scenario happens, whether it’s illness or injury, it starts to create some challenges in all the safety systems that we’ve put in place to bring workers home from overseas.
“We have done a comprehensive review of those security systems, and the weight of individuals is a real challenge.
“We’ve worked together as an industry for the last two and a half years to find solutions in things like lifeboats, stretchers, helicopter rescues, and we’ve really found that weight limits are the only solution available to us.”
“We’ve addressed these issues in the past, we’ve probably dealt with the symptoms rather than the cause, we’ve upgraded lifeboats in the past, we’ve brought in additional comprehensive classification for helicopter passengers.”