Proudly supporting
Look Up Look Out
A non-profit campaign for overhead power line safety in pole work and cleaning. We manage its social media and edit its video, so the message reaches the people raising the poles.
Why a web agency cares about this
A lot of what we do is websites for trades — window cleaners, gutter and exterior cleaning, roofing, facilities management. Those are the people who stand in a garden and raise a twelve-metre conductor over their heads, often within a few metres of a cable they never looked up to check.
In April 2024 Jason Knight was hit by a 33,000-volt flashover that jumped around two metres from an overhead line to his water fed pole. He never touched the cable. He lost his left forearm, several toes, and has been through more than twenty operations. He survived. His father John now runs the campaign so that the next person hears about it beforehand rather than afterwards.
The campaign is free to use, free to share, and run by two people. What it needs is reach. So rather than only putting the badge in our footer, we do the part we are actually good at: we manage the campaign's social media and edit its video — getting the safety message in front of the people who need to see it before they raise a pole.
What supporting it actually means here
A logo in a footer is not support. This is the work.
We run their social media
Day to day, on the campaign’s behalf. Safety guidance, survivor stories and near-miss reports only work if people see them, and a campaign with no reach is a website nobody visits. Getting the message in front of cleaners is the job.
We edit their video
Footage into something people will actually watch through and pass on. A survivor telling you what happened to them is the most persuasive safety material there is — it just has to be cut so it holds attention long enough to land.
We check safety claims before we publish them
The campaign asks a hard question of manufacturers and retailers: if a product is described as insulated, non-conductive or voltage-tested, what does that actually mean, what evidence backs it, and what are its limits? We now ask that before a claim goes on a client site — and we have already rewritten one that did not survive it.
If you work with a pole, read this bit
- Electricity does not need contact. At higher voltages it arcs across an air gap to anything offering a path to earth. A wet carbon fibre pole is an excellent one.
- Insulated does not mean safe. The campaign puts it plainly: PPE and insulated tools are last lines of defence. They do not make an unsafe distance safe, and they are not permission to work near overhead lines.
- Distance is the control. HSE GS6 treats work within 10 metres of an overhead line as high risk needing expert advice. Minimum clearances are 1m at 230/400V, 3m at 11kV and 33kV, and 6m at 132kV — and those are minimums, not working distances.
- If there are lines near the job, clean what you can reach safely and tell the customer why the rest is not being done.
The campaign has the full guidance, survivor stories, risk assessments and free pole stickers. It is a far better source on this than we are.
Look Up Look Out is operated by John Knight and is a non-commercial, not-for-profit public safety initiative. Dalton Digital is not affiliated with the campaign and receives nothing for supporting it. The campaign badge is used with the campaign's published permission for supporters. Safety guidance summarised here is theirs and HSE's, not ours — follow the originals.